S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (83 page)

Ramon shifted the battered car into gear and backed up until all four tires were now on solid ground. Then he wrestled the shift lever into drive.

As they passed the man they'd watched being attacked, he pushed himself off the ground. Half of his neck was missing. So was all of his face. He took an experimental step, lurched off balance and toppled over the side of the bridge.

 

They were careening down a bicycle path, tires slipping on the loose gravel edges. They were heading south again toward Selden.

Ramon had remembered about the path being here from his post-doc days at Brookhaven. He and the boys would pack a few candy bars and water bottles, then hop on their cheap, garage-sale rock hoppers and blow the afternoon navigating the trail's sinuous paths. They rode north from Suffolk County Park, through Gordon Heights, all the way up to Mt. Sinai, where they'd stop for a bucket of steamers and a beer at the Clam Shack. Sometimes two beers, if they were feeling especially flush that day. Never more. The trail was simply too narrow, windy, and steep to navigate in any state of inebriation. They were young and wild, but they weren't reckless.

He had tried to get over to Route
112
, but the road was blocked by an armored tank, its turret ominously pointed back toward the line of cars whose drivers apparently shared Ramon's idea. The soldiers stood their ground around the tank, grim-faced and mute, their rifles held at the ready. It was clear that they were refusing to allow anyone to pass. The scene was a stark departure from the previous afternoon's show of civility.

“Something's changed everywhere,” Ramon had commented, eying the tank suspiciously.

Lyssa could only look at him and blink. She was still in a state of shock at what they'd witnessed.
Yeah
, she thought,
something's changed. Someone flipped a switch.

Without warning, Ramon had spun the wheel and exited the line. He circled across the front of a palatial colonial manor overlooking a golf course. The wrought iron fence had been torn down and tank tracks marred the pristine lawn.

The bike trail had been exactly where he remembered it, paralleling the seventh fairway. Ramon cut across it, driving through the automatic sprinklers to reach it, scarring the otherwise flawless grass and throwing mud into the air.

“My phone's dead,” Lyssa uttered numbly. “Is yours—”

“Who would you fucking call?” he snapped. “The police? An ambulance? Nobody's coming.” His shock was wearing off, and terror was taking its place. “It's all fucked and nobody's coming and
goddamn it all to hell! What the fuck is happening to everything?
” He slammed his fist into the dash, cried out in pain, then hammered again even harder. Tears streamed from his eyes. “What the hell is happening?”

“Stop it!” Lyssa screamed. “Stop talking like that.”

Cassie was sitting in back with her face in her hands, her body rocking. She hadn't spoken since the trucker had gone over the side of the bridge, but now she started to moan, and the sound sent a fresh set of shivers through Lyssa. They sounded much like the moans she'd heard back there at the bridge.

Ramon wrapped his mangled hand around the steering wheel. Blood was coursing down his arm, dripping off his elbow.

“I need you to keep calm,” Lyssa quietly told him. It was strange. The more freaked out he was becoming, the calmer she felt. “For all of us.”

She turned back to the window, exhaling deeply. She dropped the phone into her lap, knowing it was now just a useless piece of junk.

The trail jagged to the right. Ramon let off on the gas and twisted the steering wheel, but he still overshot the turn.

“Easy,” she said, and braced for an angry reply which didn't come.

The radio was practically useless, offering no guidance or explanation for the chaos. All of the stations were abuzz with news about a ‘situation which swept across the island overnight.' But there was no consensus as to what exactly the ‘situation' was or what was causing it.
We have multiple reports of people attacking each other, multiple casualties, though no confirmed reports of deaths.

Ramon shook his head. “I'll fucking confirm it.”

“Ramon. Please. For Cassie's sake.”

When asked whether the rabies epidemic might be responsible, health and agricultural officials once again denied the claims, reaffirming that they were not yet clear what the disease is or that it could even infect humans. ‘Our priority has been to find the root cause so we can counter it,' one health official told this reporter on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak on the subject. ‘But this has been a much larger challenge now that the military has taken over all operations and restricted movement of both people and information. Unofficially, they've indicated that this is some sort of mass hallucination.

“That proves it,” Lyssa muttered.

Ramon shot her a look of puzzlement. “Mass hallucination?”

“I told you it was the towers, the Stream.”

This time, he didn't deny it. He just turned back to the trail and kept driving.

It was slow going. There were places where the plant growth encroached well onto the path. The brambles scraped against the sides of the car. Any other time, Ramon would've screamed about the paint job. Now, only the roof remained unscathed.

They came to a straightaway and Ramon accelerated briefly before skidding to a stop. They sat there idling for several moments assessing the scene which lay before them.

The bike was on its side in the middle of the path, roughly twenty yards ahead. The front wheel was slowly rotating. Large puddles of blood darkened the trail. There was no one in sight.

The Audi's engine chugged unevenly, rocking them so that they felt like they were still moving. The bridge incident had done something to the front of the car, and the back wheel was bent out of alignment. The vibrations sent Lyssa's teeth chattering and made her skin itch. The rattling front fender sounded ominously loud.

“What do we do?” she asked.

“Can't drive over it.”

“Can you go around?”

They eyed the bushes. There was no telling how soft the ground was. No knowing what might be hiding. The presence of the bike and wet cement indicated a fresh attack. But neither victim nor attacker could be seen.

It was not a good place to get stuck.

Ramon unclipped his seatbelt.

“No!” Lyssa said, placing a hand on his arm.

“We have to move it. I can't drive over it.”

“I'll do it. You're driving.” She saw the look on his face. “I'm not arguing, Rame. Get as close as you can.”

He pulled up until they were less than ten feet away, then switched the radio off. “Just wait a sec,” he told her and rolled the windows down a few inches. He was listening for evidence the attacker might still be nearby. But with the car noise, it was impossible to tell.

High above them, a jet streamed across the sky, a tiny silver chevron marking its path with a pair of white contrails. They waited until the jet disappeared and the lines had grown fat and merged into one. Then Lyssa reached over and put her hand on the door handle. “Ready?”

Ramon exhaled and gave her a worried look. “Just drag it to the right there. Be quick. I'll pull to the left so you can hop back in as I pass.”

She nodded and pulled the handle until the latch clicked. Then, in a swift, smooth motion, she pushed it open, stepped out and stepped around it.

The car was a mess, a complete loss. The front fender was barely holding on, and the entire side was badly deformed from the bridge railing. The memory sent a tremor of distress through Lyssa, so she tried to expel the image from her mind. It was replaced instead with the vision of the truck driver going over the side. He'd been a selfish asshole, but he hadn't deserved to go like that. Nobody did.

She stepped toward the bike, glancing cautiously back along the trail for movement. There was a deep dent in the hood of the car where the corner of the trailer had caught it. If it had tipped a few seconds sooner, they would've been crushed. Beneath the bumper, green fluid was dripping onto the cement. The radiator was leaking and would soon run dry.

Ramon edged forward a few inches and the intensity of the rattling beneath the hood doubled. “Hurry up,” he mouthed.

She turned toward the bike. The back tire was bent, and there was blood everywhere, thick pools of it, splatters, sprays. A sports shoe dangled from a pedal, one of its laces tangled around the shaft.
So this is how they got caught
, she thought, and the hair on the back of her neck rose as she imagined how the chase ended with the rider crashing to the ground.

Mass hysteria. Hypnotic suggestion.

Had the rider gone crazy? Or had he been attacked by someone else first?

She could see one of the offending towers peeking over the brush about a hundred yards down the path. She could almost feel the signal trying to get inside of her head, whispering in her mind to do bad things.

The whole eastern half of the island was covered in them. They needed to go west. They needed to get away.

Tilting her head, she glimpsed a patch of white at the base of the tower through the reeds. White paint and a shiny red reflector. She stepped carefully over the bike and started to jog toward the clearing.

Ramon tapped on the horn. “Lyssa!” he hissed at her. “Stop! What are you doing?”

She held up a hand but kept going, sidestepping with one eye on the tower and the other behind.

It was a van from one of the work crews.

She heard Ramon trying to open his car door. It was jammed shut. “Lyssa!”

“Just wait,” she shouted back.

He shifted over to her seat and began to get out.

“No! Stay in there with Cassie. Don't leave her alone!”

“What are you doing?”

“The car's leaking,” she said. “There's a van up here. We might be able to—”

“Get back here! We'll drive up to it. It's not safe.”

Lyssa took one last look up the trail, nodded, then started back. She knew he was right and she should listen. But she was tired of always obeying. Besides, he wouldn't listen to her, either.

Ramon was bending down over the bike. He grabbed it by the handlebars and tried to lift it upright. The wheels were too badly bent to roll.

“This is a thousand dollar bike—” he started to say.

A rustle from the brush beside the trail stopped him. They both turned and stared. But nothing moved.

Lyssa stepped forward. “Just the wind.”

But she was wrong. The biker stepped out through the reeds. He was wearing in one of those skintight riding outfits, all red and aerodynamic. His helmet was white.

“What the—”

The biker lifted his arms and stepped toward Ramon. He began to moan.

“Ramon! Get out of there!”

The biker spun toward her.

He's not wearing tights. Oh god, he's not wearing anything at all!

Except for a fragment of green material dangling from his arm, he was completely naked. With each step, blood oozed out of a hole at the base of his neck. It was blood she'd thought at first was an outfit. He was totally covered in it.

“Get out of there,” she told Ramon. She didn't take her eyes off the man.

He limped toward her, stumbling awkwardly but somehow staying on his feet. A chunk of muscle had been torn from his thigh, leaving the frayed remains of thick, ropy tendons dangling from his exposed kneecap. The sheaths glistened silver and white.

How can he even be walking?

Cassie was screaming. Lyssa could hear it, but she sounded so far away. And Shinji was barking, scrabbling at the window to get out. Distracted by the noise, the biker swung stiffly around again and began to lurch back toward the Audi.

“Hey!” Ramon shouted. He'd dragged the bike to the side of the trail by then. “Hey, no! Over here!”

Once more the biker turned.

“Yeah, that's right. Is this your bi—”

The attack came without warning. One moment, the rider was stumbling, his eyes unfocused and his movements uncertain. The next he was lunging. But his leg buckled when his ankle broke, and he fell onto Ramon. They both tumbled to the cement with only the bike between them.

Ramon's head slammed onto the trail. His face went slack and his hands fell from the bike frame.

“No!” Lyssa screamed, and began to run. The fifty or so feet between them now seemed like a mile.

The biker leaned forward and opened his mouth. The chinstrap stretched, squeaking against the plastic helmet from the strain.
Clack
went his teeth and the jaw opened again, wider this time, wider than Lyssa thought was possible.
Clack CLACK!
The strap was going to break.

A fist sized clot of blood slipped from the hole in his neck and splattered sickeningly to the ground.

Ramon groaned and opened his eyes. With a weak yell of surprise, he tried to push the biker away.

Lyssa's legs felt like mush. She couldn't run fast enough. The ground was molasses, grabbing her feet and holding them.
Oh god, no!

And then she was there, clutching at the biker's helmet because there was nothing else to grab. Her hands were sticky with blood, yet they kept slipping. Fingers found the ear holes. She yanked the man's head back. But he didn't even seem to notice her. He just kept reaching for Ramon, kept trying to bite him through the bike frame.

With a foot planted firmly to either side of his body, Lyssa heaved back, twisting as she went.
Don't break
, she prayed, willing the strap to hold.
Please don't break.

And then it did.

She flew backward off balance, tripping over her own feet and flailing her arms. She fell into the bushes where the biker had been hiding. She tried to remain upright, but her foot came down at an awkward angle. Down she fell. Her left hand plunged wrist-deep into the mud.