S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (149 page)

“
Kelleeeee!
”

Jake turned his dead eyes at the sound and locked them onto the huddled pair. He snarled again, then slipped off Kelly's back.

No, Jake,” Jessie groaned. “No, Jake, I'm sorry.” She grabbed her head, as if she thought it might explode.

Kelly lifted himself off the ground and tackled the monster. He cried out, his voice a drowning gurgle, and told them to run.

Jake launched himself back onto Kelly and took another bite.

“Jessie!” Reggie hissed. He tried to pull her away, but she was straining against him, reaching out, as if she could still touch them across the open distance. “We have to go!”

Kelly lifted himself up, staggered toward the building, and fell across the threshold. Yet even then he didn't stop. He began to crawl inside, dragging jake with him.

Reggie stared at them, still holding Jessie back. He couldn't turn away from the horror. Her struggles grew weak, and she collapsed against him. They watched as Kelly reached up, grabbed something, a pipe maybe, and tried to stand up. There was a screech of metal and liquid began to pour out of a valve and splash onto the floor.

With dawning horror, Reggie realized what he was doing. “Don't look, Jessie,” he whispered.

Flames erupted inside the building, enveloping both figures. They became shadows now, and for several moments longer they danced inside that fluid light.

Then the building exploded.

 

“
Jessie,
” Reggie hissed. He had to wrestle her to the ground. “Listen to me, Jess. We've got to get out of here. Now!”

She was wailing in anguish, trying to pull away from him, clawing at his hands as he held her arms. “
Noooo!
” she shrieked. “
KELLY!
”

Her husband's screams had drawn the first Undead, but the inferno was certain to bring them in even greater numbers. They were piling up against the fence, which was starting to lean in. And Jessie's cries were stirring them up into a frenzy. They too raised their voices; their moans made the very air thrum with sound.

Reggie wrapped an arm across her chest and tried to drag her away, but she fought him with bitter fury. She dug in her heels and pulled him back. He didn't blame her. And to come so soon after the joy of their reunion, he could only imagine the depth of her grief.

He had been so wrong about Kelly. This act of his hadn't been callousness. It had been a mask hiding his abiding terror at losing her.

And now she had lost him.

The flames reached higher into the sky, scratching with their orange fingers and flicking black smoke from their tips like a dark magic spell. The fire grew taller than the treetops. A wall of the shed collapsed with a groan and threw up a swarm of sparks.

Everything grew quiet then to Reggie. The roar of the flames, the moaning of the Undead, Jessie's screams— they all stopped. His shock made him deaf. All the noises cancelled each other out in his mind, leaving nothing, not even the sound of his heartbeat and the rush of air as he struggled to breathe. Jessie fought him in deafening silence. And time itself seemed to have lost all meaning.

He nearly lost her. She slipped out from under his arm and broke away, but he lunged and managed to grab her shirt and pull her back.

“Stop!” he screamed.

Then everything came back to him in a rush— time and sound, heat and light

“No, Jessie!”

The first Infected appeared around the corner of the closest building. Another quickly followed.

“We've got to get away, Jessie,” he growled in her ear.

A third appeared off to their right.
Only three, so far
, he thought, calculating his odds
.
They would be fairly easy to handle. He could probably even do it while carrying her. But more would come, and soon. Those that were already inside the place, the ones which had been hiding until they had a reason to come out, would be here soon. Back here against the fence, with only the burning structure, there would be no place for him and Jessie to hide.

He pulled harder. She was strong, difficult to hold onto. He didn't know where she got her strength — anguish and anger, he supposed — but it surprised him. “You can't,” he said through gritted teeth. “It's too late.”

“I will,” she growled back at him. “Let me go!”

“No, I can't. You're pregnant.”

His hands slipped again, slick with sweat, and she had a chance to break away. Instead, she fell to the grass. She turned toward him and stared. He didn't wait for her to change her mind. He wrapped his arms about her and lifted her up. Then he turned and ran, the heat of the burning outbuilding on his back.

Through the golden grass that was knee-high on him. Gnats rose like sparks into the afternoon air. Grasshoppers sprung away. Jessie beat her hands on his back and ordered him to put her down. He kept running.

A smaller structure lay to his left, but he angled for the main one, not to get inside, but to go around it. He needed to get past it, back to the collapsed building where they'd dropped their packs. Then to the gap in the fence. It was their only way out, other than climbing over. He doubted Jessie would even try.

He shifted her to his stronger side and backhanded the first Infected he met. The next one received the sole of his shoe planted square on its chest. A third he grabbed by the arm and spun it around. The thing was barely more than bones and leathery skin, and he feared the arm would break off and that it would keep coming at him. But the arm held. He planted his palm against the back of its head and slammed it against the side of the building. It slid down, leaving a dusty brown smear. It immediately began to rise again.

He didn't bother to finish it. He planned to be long gone before it got back up.

Jessie stopped fighting him. He could feel her sobbing now, a loose sack of bones and flesh without any strength left to give. She asked him again to put her down, but it was just a ghost of a request. No strength in her voice, no sense of anything but defeat.

“Yeah, in a sec,” he told her. “Just got to get us out of here first.”

He barely broke stride when he reached their packs, just bent down and scooped them up and slung them over his other shoulder. As he stepped around the corner of the building, he expected to see Infected scattered about, but what met them instead stopped him in his tracks.

There were only about a dozen inside the fence, but pouring out of the darkness beneath the trees came a hundred more. They moved en masse toward the smoke and flames, their arms swinging stiffly, as if from some stubborn muscle memory that refused to die.

Most appeared not to have noticed them yet, but he knew it wouldn't take long once they started. When the chorus of those that noticed them had reached a certain timbre, they would all key into it and give chase.

“I need you to run with me now, Jess,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Can you do that?”

“Put me down,” she murmured.

“We can't go back there.”

“Put me down.”

“Kelly's gone.”

There was a pause. Then: “I know. Put me down. Please.”

Slowly, he crouched until her feet touched the dirt. The two Undead that had noticed them were taking their time shambling over. It hadn't yet registered in their brains that they were food.

Reggie straightened up. “Are you ready?” he whispered.

She shook her arm. “You need to let go of me, Reg.”

“Not a chance.”

“I know he's gone.” She sounded more irritated than defeated. “It's done. Kelly's gone.”

“He did it to save us, Jess.”

The closest Undead opened its mouth, and several small, brown pebble-sized objects fell out. They were bits of its own tongue that it had chewed away.

“It's okay, Reggie. Let me go.”

He loosened his grip. She pulled away, then reached over and grabbed her bag off his shoulder.

The closer zombie moaned then and picked up its pace. The effect was almost instantaneous. Several more turned and zeroed in on Reggie and Jessie. The effect spread from there, rippling outward until dozens were converging on the spot where they stood.

“Time to go.” He pulled the machete from his belt, but she grabbed him and shook her head.

“No killing.”

She swept past him, gesturing for him to follow. And she was fast, sprinting toward the downed tree. She leapt, springing off the ground and landing deftly onto the trunk. Without slowing, she scurried over it.

Reggie slipped on the mossy bark and skinned his arm and back as he fell, but he popped right back up again.

“Back the way we came,” he shouted after her. “There's a car waiting for us.”

She split the difference between two approaching Infecteds. But the gap closed behind her and forced Reggie to go around them.

“There's too many!” he shouted at her back. He tried to keep her in sight. If they got separated, their chances of surviving grew significantly smaller. But she didn't answer. “We should turn around!”

One stepped into his path and grabbed him. They both crashed to the ground. Reggie pushed it off and was back on his feet in a second, but by then he'd lost sight of Jessie. The Undead surrounded him.

Jessie appeared out of nowhere and grabbed his arm, staying the machete he was about to swing. The Undead were all around them now. But she shook her head. “No killing.”

She pulled him to the right, through a gap that seemed to open up the moment she stepped into it. He followed, gripping her hand so tightly that he feared he'd crush it, but she gripped him back with as much power. She led, winding a sinuous path through them, and they parted before her almost magically before closing again in their wake.

Not magic
, he thought.
She just sees things you can't see. She's right at home here.

The Infected began to thin away as they approached the place where they'd emerged from the wood earlier that afternoon. But the horde was still behind them, and they would only grow faster as their stiff joints loosened. They would always keep coming.

When they reached the trail, Jessie pulled him past her and slid to a stop. Only then did she turn. There were hundreds now, hundreds more behind them.

“No killing,” she said yet again, and raised the EM pistol she'd pulled from her pack. Her hand twitched only slightly as she squeezed the trigger.

It gave them a small cushion, just enough for them to catch their breath. It was all they needed.

Without a word, they turned and slipped into the wood.

 

“You can stop staring at me like that,” Jessie said.

“Like what?”

“Like I'm some kind of freak.”

They were back in the car and on the road. Thick black smoke rose from the hill behind them, drawing Jessie's eyes to her mirror. Such a strange thing to see without the wail of accompanying sirens. No fire trucks or police cars to pull over for, nothing to indicate that something was terribly wrong. If not for the growl of the engine and the whine of the tires on the road, the world would be completely mute about the horror they'd just left behind.

It was really the first time she felt the utter desolation of the place since returning, and she wondered how she'd ever thought it could be anything but what it really was: Hell on earth.

“I wasn't staring.”

“Right.” She sighed and adjusted her gaze to the scenery beside her. She tried not to look, but her eyes kept drifting back to the mirror.

Kelly. Kelly. It's all my fault.

She felt numb, senselessly achingly numb, like her body and mind were simply unable to process anymore pain and had shut down. She knew that she should be hurting terribly, and she did, she just couldn't seem to get the pain to mean anything. Kelly was dead. He'd died a terrible death. All because of her.

And yet the pain felt far away.

“You couldn't have done anything,” Reggie said.

She ignored him. What would it matter to argue now? It wouldn't bring him back. It wouldn't change any of the things that had happened.

“You couldn't have known.”

Except she had. She'd heard Jake, days ago when she first arrived at Jayne's Hill. And then again right before he attacked Kelly. She'd heard him in her mind, just as she'd heard Micah. She should have paid heed to it.

Because of her, Kelly was dead.

It was a cruel irony. Kelly had always distrusted Jake, always been jealous of him. He thought the boy was going to take her away from him, and, in a sense, Jake had. He'd returned and split them apart for good.

“Kelly did it for you, Jess. He sacrificed himself for us.”

She could sense Reggie watching her again. Or still. Whichever. She could feel his concern and it only made her angrier. She wanted him to be angry with her.
At
her. She didn't want his pity.

“You're still doing it,” she said, turning to face him. “Still staring.”

He didn't deny it this time, though he did go back to looking at the road. Redness spread over his cheeks. “How long have you known?” he asked. “About the baby.”

She didn't answer right away.

“For a while now, I guess,” she finally admitted. “I wasn't certain, just suspected it. There were . . . signs. Morning sickness. Strange cravings.”

“Uh huh.”

“But how did you know? Was it Kelly? Did he say something to you?”

He shook his head. “So, he knew then? I mean, before today.”

“What do you mean today?”

He told her about what Doctor White had told him.

She grunted and shook her head, but didn't push it.

God, she was tired. So damn tired.

She looked into the mirror, but she couldn't see the smoke anymore.

“Where are you taking us?”

“Western wall.”

“Why?”