S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (81 page)

Fred stepped back inside. He had the sheaf of papers in his hand. He stepped over to the Colonel and murmured, “I got the results, but we need to go. The cops are here. They're going door-to-door.”

The Colonel didn't seem all that concerned. He pulled the papers to his face and glanced at them. After scanning a few lines, he nodded and stood.

“We got what we came for.”

Lyssa stood up. “What is it? What's in those results?”

“Nothing to concern yourselves with.”

“Sir,” Brad asked. “What about Royce?”

“He's in hiding. We won't find him unless he wants to be found.”

“And them?” Brad pointed at the Stemples.

“They don't know anything. Our friend was just using them for his little experiments.”

He gathered his folder from the table and stepped over to the door. Before leaving, he turned one last time and added, “I recommend you take a boat, a private one. Not a ferry.”

 

Police cars were everywhere. Soldiers were everywhere. But they stood aside and watched as people made their way onto the highway.

The westbound ramp was backed up, and all of the lanes heading that way were at a standstill.

Lyssa glanced over at Ramon as they spiraled onto the eastbound ramp. She wanted to ask where they were going. She almost sensed he was running on autopilot and was going to take them to the lab.

He guided the car into the slow lane, slotting it between a pair of army trucks, the spinning bubble lights over their cabs flashing orange inside the car.

The canvas flap was closed, hiding whatever was in the back from view. Lyssa wished she could see inside. She wanted desperately to know what was in there. But the truck, as well as the one behind them, exited at the
110
interchange and headed south.

“We should never have come back,” she said, staring out her window. “We should've just stayed in Manhattan when we were there. Or just kept going further west.”

Ramon turned to her, frowning. “What are you talking about?”

She glanced into the back seat at Cassie, but the girl had her head bowed at Shinji sitting quietly on her lap.

“The new towers—”

“Oh, Christ. Really, Lyssa? Fine, here you go. Listen to your heart's content.” He reached over and angrily flicked on the radio and spun the dial until he found him.

—
get out if you can, people! Me, I'm choosing to stay. Someone has to tell the truth! But this may be your last chance to—

Uttering a sound of disgust, he twisted the dial again. “On second thought, no.”

“You're in denial, Ramon.”

“No, you are. After what just happened at home, how can you possibly still believe it's radio waves? It's a virus, honey. You heard that man. There's nothing wrong with the Stream.”

She stared at him. “How can you not see it, Rame? Sam had one of those new phones when—”

“Sam was like that before the towers went up! He didn't build his cellar butchery in a week!” He reached over to tune the radio to another station. “It's a virus, end of discussion.”

—
first reported last week and initially thought to be an accidental release of a bioengineered neurotropic virus was the result of cross-agency miscommunication. The confusion has caused unnecessary panic and anger among Long Islanders.

Claims that a contract research lab on Laroda Island weaponized the virus now appear to be incorrect. Copies of documents obtained by several media outlets through the Wikileaks website instead appear to implicate the military itself. The Pentagon has staunchly denied these claims and is dismissing the documents as fakes. Health officials with the CDC are now claiming that the disease is a previously unidentified but naturally-occurring strain of the Rhabdoviridae family.

“See?” Ramon said. “I told you. It's rabies.”

Lyssa was silent. She couldn't reason with Ramon anymore. This wasn't rabies. This was a cover up. Those men who'd attacked them in their home were all part of it. They'd called the one man Colonel, so he had to be in the military. He worked for the government, the same government which Jay Bird claimed was now complicit.

Additionally, they are saying that the disease is not as widespread as previously reported. In fact, no case of actual human transmission has been confirmed. Assuming this is true, then it is unclear why a mandatory evacuation was called.

As residents attempt to comply with the order, traffic on the Long Island Expressway has become completely jammed up from Flushing to all points west. Several jurisdictions are reporting instances of looting and violence, and hospitals are turning away patients after a run on the rabies vaccine depleted supplies.

Lyssa frowned when Ramon signaled to exit at Town Line Road. “Where are we going?” she asked. “We have to turn around.”

“North,” Ramon replied. “We'll take a ferry out of Port Jefferson.”

“That man said not to take the ferry.”

“He also broke into our home, attacked us, took confidential records, and terrorized Cassie.”

As a precautionary measure, free disease screenings are being provided at all egress points. For the public's safety, individuals showing symptoms of infection will be quarantined for seventy-two hours.

* * *

The exit was blocked by a Suffolk County sheriff's vehicle, its lights flashing and siren wailing angrily at them. They could see the deputy inside, his microphone covering his mouth: “This road is for emergency vehicles only. Please proceed to the Nicholl's Road exit.”

The going was slow, as the road was packed with cars.

A mile shy of Port Jefferson, traffic came to a standstill. It was past one o'clock in the morning by then. Cassie was asleep in the back seat, murmuring to herself in some troubled dream.

They were stuck on a one-lane bridge spanning a dark rift in the terrain. The line of cars stretched ahead of them as far as the curve of the road allowed them to see. Behind them was a tractor trailer, its headlights flooding the inside of the car. They sat without moving for a good half hour.

Ramon yawned, and suddenly Lyssa felt as if she hadn't slept in weeks. She was so tired, bone tired, and all she wanted to do was rest her eyes.

“I think we better just pull over the next chance we get,” he said. “Try and get some rest. It's not like we're going anywhere for a while.” He sighed. “God, what a clusterfuck.

She rolled her eyes. The man she'd married had turned into a regular potty mouth.

A moment later the rumble of the semi truck's engine cut off and the lights went out.

Ramon followed suit, and the night swooped in, engulfing them in silence and darkness so thick Lyssa felt as if she might choke on it.

Ramon checked his phone, exhaled in frustration. Lyssa studied him for a moment, wondering what he was thinking. She was tempted to turn on the radio, to see if the Jay Bird might be out there telling them the truth about what was happening. But what good would it do to antagonize Ramon now? They were stuck here at least until morning.

Ramon's head tipped forward, then jerked upward. He blinked numbly for a moment, then looked over at her.

“I guess here's as good a place as any to get some rest.”

He pushed his seat back as far as it would go and closed his eyes.

The last thing Lyssa did before exhaustion overtook her was to check that the doors were locked.

 

Lyssa woke to complete silence. Dawn had broken, though the sun hadn't yet climbed over the tops of the trees around them. The condensation on the insides of the windows and the fallen leaves plastered to the outside filtered the light even more.

She raised her seat back and wiped away the mist on her window. Shinji immediately began to whine from the back seat, as if he'd been waiting for someone to stir. Lyssa opened her door and in an instant he was scrambling to get over the center console to it.

“
Shh
,” she whispered. As silently as she could, she reached behind her and lifted the puppy over and placed him on her lap. “Jesus, you're getting too big and too heavy.” And he was standing right on her bladder.

It was a short walk forward to reach the end of the bridge. She glanced into the other cars as she passed, trying not to be obvious. In three of the four, people were still sleeping. The fourth car was empty, the driver's side door hanging open. Farther up the road, she could hear engines running and the sounds of tires moving over gravel. Traffic was beginning to move.

She started to jog, urging Shinji to keep up with her.

She took a narrow path through the bramble, soaking her pants as she went on the dew-laden brush. Shinji dutifully followed. Within feet of leaving the road, she could see none of the cars, and the sound of their engines became little more than a distant hum. The high-pitched whine of mosquitoes was louder.

“Stay where I can see you,” she told the dog, as she glanced about them. Convinced that they were alone, she unbuckled her pants to relieve herself.

The ground beneath her was soft with composting debris, the air redolent with organic decay. She knew the creek was somewhere to her right, down a steepening incline, though she couldn't hear it. She let her head drop against the tree she was leaning on and shut her eyes and took in a deep breath. There was no hint of smoke, no diesel fumes. Just rotting leaves and wet earth and—

Something rustled to her right. She pushed herself to her feet, yanking her pants up. Her back raked against the rough bark of the tree. Her underwear bunched into a roll against her upper thighs. Twisting her head around the trunk, she squinted into the shaded wood in the direction of the sound.

Nothing.

She didn't even dare to breathe. Even the crackle of her neck as she looked for Shinji was loud in her ears.

Of course
, she thought.
Damn dog's run off.

She took a moment to fix her underwear, then stepped away from the tree.

“Shinji,” she called in a loud whisper.

No answer.

Damn it.

The rustling had come from the creek-side of the trail, down the slope, which meant he'd likely gone into the thicker bracken there. She couldn't return to the car without him.

Watchful of where she placed her feet lest she fall on the slick ground, she slowly made her way down. The farther she went, deeper beneath the forest's canopy and into the steep cut made by the running water, the darker it became.

“
Shinji! Damn it, where are you, you stupid dog?”

The trail was lined with raspberries, the thorny canes bowing low with ripe fruit, and her mouth watered at the prospect of eating some of them. Her distraction cost her dearly, as she tripped on a root and stumbled forward. Fortuitously, the brush she crashed into at the turn of the path was some other type of growth. It lacked thorns, but the branches still caught her clothes and tangled with her hair.

“Shinji!” Louder this time. She was getting irritated with him. “When I find you, I'm going to—”

More rustling, now uphill, closer to the overpass. It sounded like something large.

“Shinji!”

She was in an awkward position, half supported by the brush she'd fallen into, half by the branch she'd grabbed. She forced a leg behind her to gain some leverage, and felt the ground give way beneath her. Her heel scraped the sharp edge of a rock, and she heard pieces tumble to the ground far below her. She'd nearly fallen over the edge of the cliff. The stream, which was barely a trickle, quietly burbled twenty feet beneath her.

She retraced her steps, slowly making her way back up the trail. She could still hear something moving through the bracken ahead of her.

“I'm going back to the car,” she announced, impatiently. “Either follow me or be left behind.”

She stepped into the small clearing where she'd relieved herself and checked around her once more. The rustling now sounded like it was coming from beneath the bridge. She thought she heard a grunt. She paused, confused. It hadn't sounded like a dog, and she didn't know if there were wild pigs here. It sure didn't sound like a deer.

She hurried up the trail, slowing only after her feet hit the hot pavement.

The Audi doors opened as she jogged up to it, and both Cassie and Ramon stepped out. “There you are!” he exclaimed. “We're moving out now. Cassie get back in the car.” He stepped quickly to Lyssa's side and stopped her. “Where the hell did you go? I was just about to send out a search party.”

“I had to pee,” she muttered. She gestured to the trees to the side of the bridge. “But Shinji's still down there. He didn't come back with—”

She stopped when she saw Ramon shake his head. “Shinji's in the car. He returned about fifteen minutes ago.”

“What?”

Ramon plucked a branch from her hair. “You didn't happen to see anyone down there, by any chance? The driver of that car at the end of the bridge hasn't come back, and we're stuck here until he moves.”

Lyssa shook her head. “No, but I heard someone—”

A cry rose from beneath the bridge, a scream of pain and terror. It rose until it shattered in a wet gurgle. And then it stopped.

“What the hell?”

“Stop!” came a man's voice, shrieking with terror. “Stop! Oh god, no!
NOOOOO!
”

 

They ran to the railing and peered over into the shadows, but they saw nothing but leaves fluttering in the breeze. The stagnant air there was hot and oily, stinking of diesel fumes and damp earth. The shouting turned incoherent. It stopped abruptly, as if cut off. The silence lasted several seconds before it was shattered once more by a second bloodcurdling scream.

Lyssa raised her eyes to Ramon, who'd gone white as a sheet. She was sure she looked just as pale.