S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (122 page)

If the mop up teams didn't start gaining ground on the scourge, then they would soon all in a world of hurt.

“This one's toast.” Castle laughed and poked at the corpse with the end of a towel rod he yanked off the wall. There was no way to tell if the victim had been male or female, no clue as to their age. The rod pierced the crusty shell of charred skin with a crunch and slipped into the viscous still-smoldering goo that had once been a brain.

“I don't think you should do that. This is a crime scene and—”

“Death by combustion. Case closed.”

Hank shook his head. “What exactly are we looking for? Or who?” He was losing patience.

Captain Harrick had ordered the two of them back here with little more than a vague set of instructions to look for anything suspicious. He had no doubt she'd provided Castle with his own set of instructions. But what were they?

To her credit, Harrick had managed to keep the department operating, which, in the face of such chaos, was somewhat remarkable. Half the officers he knew had abandoned their posts. Yet she'd managed to convince several of them to return. And that was something considering the number of Infecteds still believed to be wandering about town, which was estimated to be in the hundreds.

During their morning briefing, he'd asked what they should do if they encountered any. Arc's protocol was clear: EM blast to neutralize. But EM pistols weren't standard issue.

Castle had stood up and pulled out his service revolver before shouting, “Double tap those assholes. Straight between their baby fucking blues!”

A couple of their colleagues had laughed. Gilfoy hadn't. Nor had Harrick.

“Arc's no longer calling the shots,” she said. “Protecting Undead assets stopped being a top priority when they refused to take my pings. Now we focus on restoring public safety and security.”

“Yo, Hank. Stand back a sec.”

Castle wound up like a baseball player and slammed the towel rod into what remained of the corpse's collapsed head. It disintegrated into a cloud of black powder and dark brown spray.

“What the hell!” Gilfoy exclaimed, wiping gore from his face.

“Just keep counting bodies. Let me worry about the evidence collecting.”

They went room-by-room, Gilfoy keeping track of the victims while Castle kept referring to some list on his Link. Each time, the overweight cop would appear to be looking for something. Then, apparently not finding it, would crush the victim's skull in glee. “Just making sure it don't come back,” he explained.

It seemed pretty damn obvious to Hank that they were beyond Reanimation.

They made their way from the medical units, which were gutted, to the wing housing the critical care wards. The damage here was less complete, though still fairly extensive. To Hank's relief, they found fewer victims, which meant more of them had gotten out. Whether they'd escaped before or after dying wasn't clear.

As they made their way through the Emergency Room to the main elevators, Hank remarked that the outbreak had started there. That was the official statement anyway, that Patient Zero had been a hospital employee.

Castle barely looked around as he swept through what had once been a waiting area, kicking aside the metal skeletons of toppled chairs and IV poles and gurneys. He didn't even bother keeping up the pretense of identifying victims, of which there were several, or of worrying about their Reanimation potential.

Crossing the open lobby, a figure emerged from behind the largely intact reception desk. Castle didn't see it. His eyes were on the stairs. He didn't even know it was there until it moaned, and by then it was almost on him.

Hank shouted. The Undead thing, its clothes and hair charred and its skin covered in weeping blisters, spun around, which bought Castle another second or two. He whipped his service revolver from his holster, stepped forward and put a bullet into its skull. It stopped in its tracks, its mouth dangling open as if in surprise, then slowly tipped over onto its face.

“Now that's what I'm talking about!” Al shouted. He spun around to face Hank. “See? We don't need those fuckers in NCD. Bunch of pansy-assed, zombie-loving pussies!”

“I'm not comfortable with—”

“Oh geez, Gilfoy. Fucking lighten up already. You're bringing me down.”

“All I'm saying is we should follow protocol.”

“Just come on. I ain't got all day.”

Hank followed him to the stairwell, where Castle blew the head off another victim without breaking stride. He didn't even confirm it was infected before doing so, just shot the woman point blank as she appeared from around a corner. The bullet took off the top right quarter of her face. The blood splatter on the wall behind her was bright red and unclotted.

“This is wrong, Castle,” Hank protested. “We shouldn't be here doing this. What are we looking for anyway? Just tell me? It wouldn't happen to be someone specific now, would it?” He'd lost all his patience for the charade.

Castle turned and glared at him. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I think you do. What did Harrick say to you?”

They were standing at the doorway to the stairwell. A chorus of moans rose from the landing below, triggered by the sound of the officer's voices. Hank went over and looked down into the darkness.

It was filled with at least a dozen or more of the Infected. He caught sight of a firefighter whose face appeared to have been chewed off, and his stomach clenched at the sight. Many of the walking corpses were burnt, but some had only a few shallow bites on them. They bumped mindlessly into each other, their arms and faces held up in ghoulish exaltation.

Without bothering to aim, Castle fired a couple rounds into the horde. “Tell you what, Hank,” he said. “Why don't you stay here and put the rest of them down?”

“I'm not splitting up.”

“I'm your superior. Do what I tell you, okay?”

“Breaking protocol will only—”

“Again with the damn protocol?” Castle laughed. “There's no protocol for any of this, Hank. Arc's AWOL and NCD is obsolete. We're on our own, which means we het to make the rules now!”

“But—”

“Fine. You want protocol? I'm your senior. Follow orders.”

He spun around and took the stairs by twos, leaving Hank to fume alone.

* * *

Albert Castle knew his partner didn't like him. He knew that that dislike had grown since he put that asshole Daniels into the same cell with the two drug runners, but he'd only been following orders. Harrick had told him to get him out of the way.

He was miffed that Gilfoy had gone and spoiled his fun, though he didn't let it bother him too much. He was about to stop the fight anyway. After all, he only meant to punish the Daniels kid, not kill him. No, what bugged him was that his younger partner was starting to question everything he did, like he thought he was so much smarter. Well,
he
wasn't the one fucking the captain, was he?

The kid was getting a bit full of himself, that's all. Getting to be too much like his copper father was, too old-school. He didn't see that the rules were meant to be bent and broken. And even, in certain circumstances, bought and paid for.

Circumstances such as this.

He smiled as he broke through into the gloom of the second floor, his pistol out in front of him and his eyes searching for more survivors to put down.

Speaking of which, Gilfoy should be thanking him for letting him deal with the fuckers down in the stairwell. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, shooting them like they were fish in a barrel. Castle couldn't think of too many things that were more fun than shooting things in a barrel.

He stopped and frowned at the silence.
That boy better start wasting some bullets
, he thought. Finally, a shot rang out. Then another. “Thatta boy. But not too fast. Take your time. Relish it.”

He kicked through the still smoldering door of Doctor White's office and looked around. The walls and carpet were scorched, yet, incredibly the curtain over the window was still intact, as was the desk.

He stepped further inside and made his way around the furniture. He fully expected to see the charred body of the woman he'd choked to death just days before lying in exactly the same position he'd left her.

This was what the whole charade of “looking for evidence” had been for. Harrick wanted to be sure she was as dead as he told her she was, but she wanted to make sure no one traced the woman's death back to her.

“You checked her pulse, right?” she'd asked him, after the outbreak had happened. “You made sure she was dead, right? No? Jesus Christ! Then how the hell can you be sure she's dead?”

“Hey, I ain't no doctor!”

“Not a doctor?” She proceeded to rip him a new one. “You can take a pulse, can't you? Or are you too stupid to do even that?”

“Hey, I'm positive the bitch stopped breathing.”

Then, as if that weren't bad enough, when he told her about the telephone call and the message on the machine, she asked if he thought to bring it with him.

“No.”

She'd stared him down with such ferocity that he actually felt his testicles crawl up inside his body. “Well, go back and get it.”

As much as he enjoyed screwing the woman, as much as he enjoyed the things she could make his testicles do in the privacy of the motel room they regularly used, this was one of those decidedly
un
pleasant sensations, and one he didn't care to experience again anytime soon.

He circled the doctor's desk and stared at the objects scattered about the floor. There was no body. And no phone.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “Shit fuck!”

“What's up?” Gilfoy asked from the doorway.

Castle almost screamed. Gilfoy actually did, when the pistol in his partner's hand fired, lodging a bullet in the doorframe by his knee.

“Jesus!” Castle yelled. “God fucking damn it, Hank! Don't sneak up on me like that!”

“Sorry, I—”

“Did you finish off those dead fuckers like I told you to?”

“I was going—”

He shoved Gilfoy aside and headed back to the stairwell. When he got to the first floor landing, he leaned over the railing and emptied his revolver into the remaining Undead.
Click click click
, went his revolver when it was empty.
Click, click, click, click.
Most of them were still standing.

He was tempted to go down there and finish them off with his bare hands. Meanwhile, that asshole partner of his just stood there like an idiot watching him.

“Let's go,” Al finally said. He was out of breath, and his chest hurt. But a heart attack was the least of his worries at the moment. He had a feeling his testicles were going to be experiencing some new sensations shortly. And they weren't going to be very pleasant ones, either.

 

Jessie woke with the hot sun full on her face, her right foot completely stuck, and a cold, dead hand fondling her left breast.

She could imagine worse situations to be in. At least the zombie wasn't having her for breakfast. Which isn't to say that it wasn't trying, either.

She exhaled as silently as she could and tried to think about how she was going to get out of this new predicament, which felt like déjà vu all over again. Hadn't she just escaped a collapsing building not two nights before? Couldn't the world come up with some new and creative way to crush her? She felt like she was back in
Zpocalypto
playing the same level over and over again.

The roof collapse had trapped her in a space between shelving units, and it was through a tiny opening between them that the zombie was trying to reach her. She'd managed to clear herself a little wiggle room, but no matter what she did, her foot simply refused to pull free.

She gave it another experimental tug. Nope, still stuck. Not that she could go anywhere anyway with that thing sitting on top of her copping a feel.

She wondered how long it would stay there before it got bored and wandered off.

If it's anything like Reggie, probably never.

The thought almost made her laugh out loud. But then she sobered up remembering that there was a real person inside of it, someone aware of what it was doing and yet unable to stop itself. Her face flushed with embarrassment at the thought.

A half hour passed and the sun slid from one side of the gap to the other. She drifted in and out, cursing her growling stomach.

She snapped wide awake when she heard the voices. They were most definitely
not
inside her head.

“Don't tell me I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about!”

It was the Live Players. Somehow, they'd found her, and they sounded angry.

“You're the one who can't read a fucking road map. I knew teaming up with you like this was a bad idea.”

That's Penny
, Jessie thought.
Penny Smith
.

“Fuck you.”

And that was Jo. How the hell did they find her so quickly?

“God, don't you women ever shut up? Yakkity yakkity, like a bunch of hens. Are you actually
trying
to get us killed?”

“Fuck you, Emerson,” both women said at the same time, their voices fading as they passed the shop.

The zombie above her moaned and shifted its weight as its attention was drawn away to the new source of flesh. It withdrew its hand, finally giving Jessie's breast a much deserved break from its molestation.

“Hold up, guys,” Penny's voice said, getting louder again. “We passed it. The signal's coming from that store back there.”

“In
there
?” asked a third female voice. “The place is a fucking mess.”

That's Rosie. So, she
is
with them after all.

“Careful,” Emerson warned. “There's another one of them dead bastards.”