S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (66 page)

 

“Hello?” Lyssa shouted into the phone. “Hello? Ramon, is that you?”

She thought she could hear someone breathing on the other end of the line, something rustling against the phone.

“Mama?” Cassie called from upstairs.

“It's all right, honey. It's just the power went out. Stay where you are and I'll be right up.”

She pressed the phone against her ear. “Who is this?”

Silence.

“Listen, if this is some kind of joke—”

“
Leave Long Island,”
a raspy voice whispered.
“Get away while you can. Hurry.”

Lyssa felt her strength leak away from her legs.

“H-hello?”

Nothing.

“Drew?”

But the line was dead.

She spun blindly around, orienting herself on the reflections of light filtering in through the kitchen window. She remembered there was a flashlight in the junk drawer by the stove. It felt like miles away through the darkness, a black sea to swim through and hidden dangers lurking in the depths of the shadows.

“Stupid,” she chastised herself, propelling herself forward. “Letting yourself get spooked like—
Ow! Shit!
”

The phone flew from her hand and clattered away across the floor.

“Mama?”

“I'm okay. I just hurt myself a little.”

Damn near fucking broke my toe!

She groped into the darkness and righted the offending chair before resuming her trek across the room, limping and grunting with pain. At least the flashlight was exactly where it was supposed to be. She snatched it out, found the switch, flicked it on.

Nothing happened.

Shit! God damn Ramon!

Shaking it didn't help. Neither did banging it against her palm.

Stupid piece of shit!

She tossed it into the sink, then leaned against the edge panting.

She could only see a small wedge of the street in front. The lamps were dark, glowing only faintly, a residual spark of light, ghostly glows. The few houses she could see when she strained her neck were unlit.

No hum from the fridge's compressor. No welcoming blue light from the microwave.

“So much for the damn solar panels,” she muttered bitterly.

She found some emergency tea lights under the sink, which she lit after finding a book of matches in the same drawer as the flashlight. In the wan glow, she inspected her forefinger, injured on something sharp while fumbling through the drawer. A drop of blood, black in the darkness. She stuck it in her mouth and sucked. Her toe throbbed and felt swollen, but she didn't think it was broken.

From the first candle, she lit a second. Leaving one on the kitchen table, she slipped into the hallway, treading carefully so the tiny flame wouldn't blow out. Shadows danced on the walls.

All was silent but the hush of her feet on the carpet. She heard not a peep from Cassie upstairs.

Now into the back living room, the sliding glass door reflecting the tiny glow back at her — the glistening of her eyes, her wan face, the shadows beneath her chin — making her appear bruised and battered. Beyond the glass, the darkness seemed impenetrable.

She sensed that something was out there, could feel it watching her. Waiting.

Nothing's back there. The whole yard's fenced in.

Fenced and gated, but not locked.

Stepping through the room now, the skin on her neck prickling, she forced her eyes away from the darkness. Into the other unlit hallway to the staircase.

Thump.

Lyssa stopped. “C-cassie?”

Thu-thump!

She spun around and stared at the door, her eyes bulging, ears straining. The noise had definitely come from outside. From the back yard.

“Mama?”

Lyssa ignored the call. She stood motionless at the boundary between the living room and hallway. She could feel the heat of the candle flame beneath her chin, knew that if something was out there it could see her perfectly well. It would know exactly where she was.

I'm telling you, stupid, there's nothing out—

Something streaked out of the darkness and flashed past the glass. It brushed lightly against the door, a blurry shape of some sort. A hint of a face and eyes. It vanished just as quickly as it appeared. She hadn't even had time to cry out.

“Mama, I can't see. It's too dark.”

Dousing the flame with her breath, Lyssa hurried to the door, made sure it was locked. A scream was cued up in her throat, ready to be sounded if that thing chose to show itself again. Her throat felt too small to accommodate it. She turned and rushed up the stairs, her heart drumming against her ribs.

Halfway up, the thumping sound repeated itself. Lyssa whimpered and kept going.

* * *

By the time Ramon walked in the front door a half hour later, Lyssa had managed to convince herself that she'd heard and seen nothing, that it had only been her own imagination heightened by the stress of the day and primed by the suggestions she'd subconsciously picked up from that damn radio deejay during the long drive home. She hadn't been aware she was even listening, but now much of what he'd been spouting came back to her like a recording.

The man was obviously paid to generate controversy. But while it might make for good entertainment, she had to face the fact that the ideas he expressed were simply too outlandish to indulge, especially by someone with her level of education. They were too damaging, too inflammatory. Too suggestive.

And too dangerous. If Cassie were to hear him . . . .

It was time to heed Ramon's advice and stop listening.

Government conspiracies. Dead people.

Right.

He obviously thought his listening audience was a lot dumber than she.

He had been hinting at this theory that the government was dabbling in some sort of supernatural bioweapon. Biowarfare wasn't, in and of itself, anything new or all that improbable. What was new, however, was the twist he'd finally “revealed” that afternoon, that the military had used the implanted soldiers to carry diseases to the enemy during the last war, a conflict which had been won by a decisive margin.

Deadly diseases, folks
, he'd ranted.
Diseases against which there is no cure. And how, you're probably asking yourself, how would those soldiers possibly be able to do this without infecting themselves? Because
 
— stay with me, folks
 
— because you can't infect what's already infected. You can't kill what's dead.

Zombies. He had been talking about zombies. Could there be anything more ridiculous than that?

But now, sitting in the near total darkness of Cassie's room and her daughter's head on her lap, it wasn't the utter insanity of his ideas which troubled her, but that she almost believed.

That's why he's so dangerous. He gets inside your head. No more Jay Bird for you, honey. Grow up!

Yeah, it was definitely time to find a new radio station. Listening to that whack job wasn't helping her deal with real life issues. All it was doing was planting imaginary monsters inside of her brain when there were already too many real ones there. Her mind was way too stressed, too susceptible for that kind of crap. No wonder she was having trouble dealing with even the most mundane things.

“Hello?” Ramon called from the front hallway. She was relieved to hear him. “Lyssa? Cassie? You up there?”

She felt Cassie tilt her head up to whisper. “Daddy's home.”

Now from the back living room: “Anybody home?”

“Upstairs,” Lyssa croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again.

She tracked his footsteps across the room, down the hall, up the steps. A moment later, she sensed him standing in the doorway, a dark shape in the even darker blackness of the hall.

“In Cassie's room.”

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” he asked. “Why didn't you switch over to the panels?”

It took her a moment to realize what he was talking about. “I  I didn't know we were hooked up yet.”

“I told you.”

But then he wasn't there anymore. She didn't hear him leave, only heard the sound of his hand, or shoulder, brushing against the wall as he went back down the stairs.

Panels?
He expected her to switch the system over? How could she know to do something she'd never been shown how to do?

She wanted to yell at him, but she was too tired to be angry. And too glad he was home.

The garage door rumbled open below them. She heard him rummaging around, banging and swearing in the darkness. There was a minute or two of quiet. Then the distant, muted, snap of a circuit breaker followed immediately by a frustrated utterance when nothing happened.

“I'm going to check the main breaker outside!” he yelled from the bottom of the stairs.

The sound of the heavy glass door sliding along its track.

The creak of the boards on the patio decking.

Be careful!
she wanted to yell.
There's something out there. It wants to get inside!

But of course she didn't, because there was nothing in their backyard. It had all been her imagination. Just another fabrication because, yes, folks, she was letting her imagination get the better of her.

A minute passed.

Then another.

She waited, her restlessness growing. She shifted and Cassie stirred beneath her.

Suddenly the lights came on in the hallway. From downstairs, the low whine of the refrigerator condenser starting back up again came to her. The rumble of the central fan in the garage as the air conditioner kicked on. A moment later, frigid air blasted her face from the ceiling vent.

“Come on,” she said, pulling away. “You, too, Shinji.” The dog jumped up and spun excitedly around, his tail and tongue both wagging in opposite directions.

“Let's get some food for you and that puppy of yours.”

But Cassie held back. “My stomach hurts.” She ran a hand across her nose and sniffed. “I'm sick.”

“You just need to drink something. And get some food in your stomach.” She found Cassie's forehead a little warm and sweaty. But then again, so was her own. The house had heated up quickly after the power shut off. “I'm going, honey. You can come down when you're ready.”

She reached the bottom of the stairs just as Ramon appeared at the patio door. He stopped, looked down to one side, then leaned over. “Did you see this?” He lifted what appeared to be a severed head with long black hair. A section of its scalp peeled away and flopped to one side as he rotated it.

Lyssa gasped.

“I think it's a crow. Looks like it broke its neck flying into the glass.”

 

A sense of normalcy had reestablished itself by the next morning. The sun came up as it always did. The power was fully restored. People emerged from their houses dressed in work clothes and hopped into their cars and drove away. Or they came out in their robes or sweats to water their tiny gardens ahead of the midday heat. School busses rumbled past; kids went to school.

But it wasn't an ordinary day for Lyssa. On the surface, it may have looked normal, but underneath it wasn't.

She made Ramon wait for her. She didn't want to drive in alone, not after yesterday, after the scare with Cassie. Not after the power outage. Or the dead bird. Or whatever the hell was going on with the military.

He'd risen early as usual and was sitting in the kitchen with his coffee when she found him, checking the news on his tablet. That's when she told him to wait. He hadn't expressed his displeasure with her behavior in words, but it was evident in the look on his face.
It was just a bird
, she could hear him thinking.
Stop overreacting to everything.

Or maybe he was unhappy about her leaving him alone with the Ames people yesterday. Not that he could show it. What the hell would he have her do? Their daughter was sick.

He was still sitting there at the table after she came down from her shower. He was watching Cassie playing on the floor with her rabbit. And Lyssa thought that maybe she did look a little paler than usual. But she didn't mention it. She'd already pushed too much.

Ramon made a point of checking the time on his new phone and huffing impatiently. She was tempted to rip it out of his hands and throw it against the wall.

“We're not staying late tonight,” she told him. “I don't care what you have going on. Cassie needs us.”

He raised his face to her, impassive but for the eyes, which flashed. “I already said I was sorry about last night.”

He expects you to apologize, too.

But she wouldn't. “I needed you here with us! Cassie needed you. She needs
both
her parents when she's sick.”

“She's not sick. She just got too much sun. Besides.” He stood up and smoothed the creases in his pants. “I do my share.”

“You read her bedtime stories. You make her pancakes. You tuck her in. That's not parenting. That's babysitting!”

He held up his hand for her to stop. “Let's not argue right now. We can continue this during the drive if you prefer. Whenever you're ready.”

She glowered at him, checking to see if he was just indulging her. “I want to stop off at Drew's again.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding, “I think that's a good idea.”

Ronnie arrived a half hour later, looking uncertain about whether she was even needed.

“Of course we need you, Ronnie,” Lyssa told her. She apologized for being so brash the day before. “I'd had a terrible day at work.” She left it at that.

“We're switched completely over to solar,” Ramon informed the young woman as they were headed out. “So if there's any problems, just give me a call.”

Yes, give Ramon a call.

Lyssa watched them carefully, wondering about the awkward smiles they exchanged. Wondering if they meant anything.