S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (127 page)

“Just the two of you then, huh?” Jessie said. “I guess you don't really have the house surrounded then.”

Jo didn't answer.

“You must be feeling pretty confident.”

“Why shouldn't I? It's two against one. Odds are in our favor, bitch.”

Two against one. She didn't know that Jessie wasn't alone.

She could hear Andy's pained breathing around the corner to the right, somewhere in the direction of the library. “You okay down there, Emerson? Bet Jo's hoping you eat it so she can collect the whole ten mil all for herself. ‘Course, maybe she's already counting on that happening.”

“Fuck you, bitch.” He fired up the stairs, notching the corner of the wall. “You barely grazed me. Put a hole in my uniform is all.”

“Well, don't bleed all over my floor.”

Another shot, another plugged round in the wall.

“Save your ammunition,” Jo snapped.

There was a third blast, a wild shot. The railing opposite the opening from Jessie splintered, sending flecks of wood flying across the hall. “Don't fucking tell me what to do, Jo,” Andy growled. “It's because of your stupid shit that we had to come all this way.”

Jessie heard movement and looked to her left. Brother Walter stepped closer. He bent down and whispered for her to follow him. “There's another way down.”

“I'm not going out through any of the windows,” she whispered back. She'd seen the drop to the ground, and other than the porch, there was no ledge, no sloping roof to assist them. It was a straight fifteen to eighteen feet drop. Chances of breaking her leg were pretty good. And there was no way in hell she was going to climb down knotted bed sheets. They'd shoot her for sure.

“Well?” Jo shouted.

“Seems we're at a stalemate,” Jessie called down. “You can't come up and I can't come down.”

“No worries, girl,” Jo replied. “I got all the time in the world.”

“Except you've busted down the front door and Andy's shooting is bound to have attracted Infecteds.”

“Oh, I wouldn't worry about them.”

“
Are there Infected outside?
” Jessie whispered at Brother Walter.

He nodded. “Several in the yard.”

“Coming up to the house?”

Another nod. “They'll be on the porch soon, and the door's busted down. But your friends would know that. I'm sure they blocked them somehow.”

“They're not my friends!”

He gestured behind him, ignoring her protest. “We can escape, but it'll have to be through the basement.”

“The tunnels? But how do we get down there?”

“There's a dumbwaiter in the bathroom. It's manual, ropes and pulleys, counterweighted. Hasn't been used in years. Julia played in it as a child, and even then the thing was rickety, noisy.”

“So they'll hear.”

He nodded.

“We'll need a distraction.”

“Yes. I've got an idea, but you'll have to draw the one away from the kitchen while I go down. Since the lift passes right through it, she'll hear.”

“Wait, why do you get to go first? It's me they want.”

“They clearly intend to take you alive, not me. They won't hesitate to kill me to get me out of the way. Besides, if you think I saved you just to ditch you at the first sign of trouble, you're wrong.”

“What's it going to be, girlie?” Andy called. He sounded winded. “We can outwait you any day. Shit, we've already been sitting for two days watching a god damn
empty
fucking church. Haven't we, Jo?”

“Fuck off, Andy. That wasn't my fault.”

Jessie reached around the corner and fired the pistol blindly. If anything, it'd keep them honest a little longer while she figured out their escape.

Brother Walter showed her the dumbwaiter, which was built into the wall in the bathroom. The pulley squeaked when she tested it.

“How am I going to distract them?” she asked.

“For that,” he said, “you'll need some twelve year old scotch.”

He led her back to his room and opened his closet. Stacked inside were cases upon cases of liquor.

“What the hell?”

He shrugged at the look she gave him. “A man can go through a lot of the devil's water in ten years. All it takes is a little determination.”

He grabbed a half dozen bottles and instructed her to do the same. They took the stash out to the hallway and set them against the wall near the top of the stairs.

“What am I supposed to do? Get them drunk?”

“Molotov cocktails,” he answered as they hurried back to the bathroom. “You do know how to make them, don't you?”

“Yes!”

“Good. There's matches on the desk by the lantern. Rip strips of cloth from the bed sheet.” He climbed into the dumbwaiter, then asked for her pack. She hesitated before handing it over, which he shoved beneath his legs next to his own. The space in the lift was tight, even for him. Jessie wondered if she'd be able to fold herself up into a small enough ball and still be able to lower herself down.

He grabbed the rope. “It shouldn't take much effort.”

“What if it breaks?”

He waved her off impatiently. “Give me about two minutes to get down to the basement. I'll send it back up for you. Wait five minutes from the time I leave before coming down yourself. Five minutes. Oh, and try not to burn this part of the house down too quickly.” He gestured toward the stairs. “I'll wait for your cue.”

Jessie slipped back down the hall. She could hear a metallic click from downstairs. Andy was fiddling with the safety on his gun.

“Still down there?” she called.

No one answered, but the clicking sound stopped.

“Just checking. Let me know if you need anything. I can ping out for pizza if you want.”

“Now that you mention it—”

“Shut up, Andy,” Jo said.

Jessie set up the bottles, each with a wick made from torn curtain, which was easier to rip than the sheets. She took a swig of the scotch, but spit most of it back out to douse the wicks. The stuff burned her mouth and made her eyes water. She couldn't understand how anyone could ever get used to the nasty stuff enough to become an alcoholic like her mother. She didn't even like the taste of beer.

“Got something for you guys,” she shouted, lighting the first two. The first went over the railing, but it got tangled up in the chandelier and bounced back onto the step, igniting the stairs as it went.

“Shit,” she said under her breath. Andy shouted the same thing in surprise. Already the wall beside the stairs was burning.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jo screamed.

“I'd rather torch myself than let you take me!” Jessie shouted back.

“Andy, stop her!”

She threw the second one further out. It landed in the middle of the living room with a brilliant flash, the blue flames spreading outward like a ripple in a pond before turning white.

“Damn it! I said stop her!”

“How? The fucking stairs are on fire!”

“Put it out!”

“With what?”

A shape passed in front of the flames, too quick for Jessie to see who it was. She lit a third. Now she stepped out onto the landing and aimed for the front door. The flames in the stairs rose halfway up the walls now. She couldn't see through them, and a thick black smoke was gathering along the ceiling.

There was a loud bang and a sharp pain on her arm, like a wasp sting. She pressed a finger to it and found blood, then dove for the floor as another shot rang out.

“Stop shooting, asshole!” Jo screamed.

She had no idea if five minutes had passed. Gathering some of the remaining bottles in both her hands, she hurried into the bathroom. The cabinet was empty. The dumbwaiter was still at the bottom. And the rope—

It came loose in her hand when she pulled it.

Brother Walter had cut it.

 

Henry Davenport stood in the doorway of the family game room and watched his daughter for several minutes. He was frowning, thinking
When the hell did I lose control of everything?

Sienna was squirming on the floor like a worm. Like she was having some kind of seizure or something. Except that he knew she wasn't, because every so often she'd get up onto her knees and adjust her clothing before flopping back down to resume what she was doing, which was mostly rubbing her wrists against her mouth.

He finally couldn't stand watching anymore. “It's late, sweetie. You can go to sleep; the sirens are off.”

Thankfully.

He was getting sick of hearing them. They gave him a migraine so he couldn't think straight. And they were useless, going off when they weren't needed, silent when they were.

It had been an inordinately long day at the office, spent putting out administrative fires, ensuring all the municipal departments had control of their assets. The police department was a disaster. He'd meant to chastise the captain for arresting the head of Necrotics Crimes, but with the Stream finally back on for good again and the infection being contained, he'd decided to wait.

It was a delicate situation when it came to the Daniels family. Arc's relationship with them was a bit of a mystery to him. Why they hadn't prosecuted the daughter for breaking in, then siccing their new Live Players on her after she'd returned. It all felt somehow contrived, as if this was all just part of something bigger. He just couldn't figure out what it might be.

“See, honey?”

He waited to see if she'd respond. Unfortunately, the holographic projector was turned off, so he had no idea what she was doing. Or why she was acting like this.

She still didn't answer.

“See, did you hear me? Turn off that game and go to bed.”

She was mumbling beneath her breath, cursing mostly. His parents would have skinned him alive if they'd ever heard him using such language when he was her age.

Kids these days
, he thought.
Shameful.

Yeah, like you're one to talk.

It was true. He was a hypocrite, and he knew it, though he didn't like to think about it. He was ashamed of himself, ashamed of his weaknesses.

Back when Arc had announced plans to open up a gaming arcade using the same technology they used in the military and civilian labor forces, the public had voiced a resounding no against the idea, just as they had with Arc's previous attempt to exploit the tech for commercial sport hunting. It appeared for a while as if this new video game idea would suffer the same fate.

He hadn't been in favor of it either, but then Arc came knocking on his door promising to help him win what was turning out to be a very difficult reelection bid. All he had to do was come out publicly in support of their efforts and talk about the economic advantages and they would guarantee his win. So he did.

They delivered as promised.

He was still not in favor of it — albeit, privately — when Siennah begged him for an invite into
The Game
. He wanted to tell her no. He didn't like the idea of his daughter playing a game that promoted such violence. But somehow Arc found out about her. They told him that he should be thinking about a gubernatorial run in four years time. And out of the woodwork came all of these very powerful people who suddenly knew his name and wanted to speak with him about his higher aspirations. It made his head spin. How would it look, Arc's people told him, if he didn't even let his own daughter play
The Game
he had just publicly endorsed? Did he want to come across as wishy-washy?

At the time, he had had no idea how far-reaching Arc's ambitions were, nor how broadly they were developing their Reanimation entertainment ecosystem. Only after he was fully committed did he learn of the whole underground virtual sex thing. It had come as a terrible shock, of course. But it didn't take him long to become hooked.

And only slightly longer to go deeply into debt.

He regretted terribly ever having gotten into bed with the company. He wanted desperately to cut ties with them. He told himself that as soon as Siennah made enough money to dig them out of his hole, he would. Except he was spending it faster than she could make it.

“It's after three o'clock in the morning, sweetie. You've been at it for hours.”

She sat up and began jerking her feet back and forth, as if she was trying to start a fire between her ankles. He wanted to ask her what the hell she was doing.

“Two days,” she muttered. “Two fucking days. Well, you bitch, you shouldn't have waited so long to come back.”

Henry found himself disturbingly aroused by the scene.

“I see what you're doing,” Siennah said.

He jerked his hand away from his crotch and backed further into the shadows, ashamed, before realizing she wasn't talking to him.

“Siennah, honey?”

“Stop bothering me, Daddy.”

His little girl had never been like this growing up. She'd been so loving, so sweet, such a pleasure to be around.

Stop bothering me.

She'd never treated him with such disdain before. He blinked away the sting in his eyes, and realized that it was only recently that the nasty moods and rudeness had developed. The violence. The anger.

He'd noticed the bruises on his wife's body, had at first dismissed them as self-inflicted, clumsiness. But he eventually had to accept them for what they were.

Almost intuitively, he knew that Siennah was their source. He told himself he'd talk to her about it, maybe even recommend a counselor. But he never did. He couldn't. Nothing could change, not until he'd paid off his debts.

She stopped doing the thing with her feet and started ratcheting her wrists, holding them together above her head and yanking them down, again and again, jerking them hard, grunting and cursing with words that made his stomach go sour.

He did not find this part stimulating at all.