S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (87 page)

Three blocks from their own house, they found themselves in the middle of a street fight, which they quickly backed out of and found another way around. At home, they hurriedly gathered more food and water, locked everything up as tightly as possible, then fled.

There were accidents and stalled vehicles on the highway, which were unceremoniously pushed out of the way by fleeing citizens. Everyone seemed to understand that it was imperative to keep the roads clear.

Only once did they see someone who looked afflicted.

The woman was standing by the side of the road, the front of her shirt darkly stained and her skin as pale as ash. She wasn't doing anything but looking straight up at the sun.

“So much for Cassie's theory,” Ramon mumbled.

Lyssa gave him a dark look. “Why do you always have to be so dismissive?”

He opened his mouth to argue, then thought better of it.

Traffic slowed to a crawl a few miles east of Jericho, just as the Stemples were entering the East Hills area. There was a confluence of major roads there, all of them dumping their cars onto the one major artery off the island, the LI Expressway. They were still more than twenty miles out, with the most densely populated towns yet to traverse.

“Too many cars, not enough road,” Lyssa murmured, repeating something she could remember hearing, yet unable to recall where or when.

“We should head north,” Ramon said. “Up to Whitestone and across the Sound into Throggs Neck.”

Lyssa offered no opinion, so he flicked on his turn signal to merge right.

They moved less than a quarter of a mile over the next hour.

“I haven't seen any sick people in a while,” Lyssa said.

They were idling near one of the new transmission towers. She asked Ramon for his phone. He handed it over without hesitating, perhaps expecting her to make a call, perhaps to an emergency service which was now out of service. But she merely woke it and found that the Stream was still operational. She locked it in the glove compartment. Her own phone was unable to locate a signal.

“They don't like the sun,” Cassie repeated, her voice little more than a whisper. And Lyssa could only hear the echo of Ramon's words, now seemingly a lifetime ago:
There are no such things as vampires.

Ramon thought he saw the first signs of understanding beginning to spread over her face. She was starting to accept the flaw in her theory about the Stream. In fact, she'd probably known all along she was wrong.

He couldn't blame her for clinging to the idea for as long as she had. It was easier to believe that the disease sweeping across the island was caused by a manmade signal rather than a naturally-occurring virus. Solving the former would be easy and instantaneous, as long as the ones responsible had the guts to do it. All it would take was turning the network off.

But it wasn't electromagnetic. It was organic, like the MARS epidemic which had decimated parts of Indiana and Los Angeles decades ago. Like the Ebola outbreak that had laid waste to Central America.

“It just hasn't spread this far yet,” he told her.

He realized how lucky they'd been that the disease hadn't originated at the opposite end of the island. If it had spread eastward, there would have been nowhere to flee but into the ocean.

They crept along at a glacial pace. Ramon was leery of shutting off the engine to conserve fuel. People were getting more uptight, less patient. Whenever an opening formed, drivers would quickly jockey to fill it. Tempers flared; fights broke out. Ramon focused on the road, on giving no ground while also not taking any he hadn't earned. He needed to keep his family safe.

Steadily, the needle on the gas gauge sunk closer to
EMPTY
.

The hours passed. Five o'clock, six. Seven. Eight. The sun began to settle directly ahead of them. And still they saw none of the afflicted.

Lyssa tended to Cassie and Shinji, doling out their meager food supplies and water.

“If we don't get fuel soon, we're going to run dry,” Ramon said. Reluctantly, he shut the engine off.

Cassie stirred in the back. “Soon,” she repeated, her tiny voice quivering. “Soon it will be dark.”

 

“The crickets are loud tonight.”

Lyssa turned from the window, frowning. It was a warm evening and she'd cracked it open an inch or two. Ramon's was rolled all the way down.

“The crickets,” he said again, thinking she hadn't heard him correctly.

“I think they're frogs.”

They had stopped on the downward slope of an overpass, a large open area sweeping darkly away from them on the right. Lyssa could smell the swampy water, the grass. It was some kind of park.

They hadn't moved for hours, and it didn't look like they were going to anytime soon. Everyone had shut off their vehicles to conserve fuel.

From the radio, they learned that all egress points from the island were temporarily shut down due to another power outage, which had rendered their screening equipment useless. The best estimate for reopening was dawn.

It was going to be a long night.

“Those are frogs, Rame. Not crickets.”

He sighed and turned to look into the darkness of the van's interior. “Cassie's asleep.”

Lyssa nodded.

She'd been watching the family in the car beside them. The driver — she assumed he was the father — was a short, stocky man with dark hair and a reflective New York Mets jersey. He'd left nearly an hour earlier with a gas can in his hand, leaving a woman sitting inside with two children. They looked about Cassie's age, maybe younger. Lyssa couldn't tell. It didn't look like they had anything to eat. She hoped the man would bring something back for them.

The kids were obviously restless, bouncing around the back seat. Every once in a while the mother would turn around to say something to them and they would calm down for a little while.

“I wish you wouldn't give her your sleeping pills.”

“Excuse me?” Lyssa said, turning.

“Cassie. They're not good for her. It can't be good for her to sleep so much.”

“I haven't given her anything, Rame.”
Not in days, anyway.

The woman in the other car was laughing, joking with her children, trying to keep them distracted. Lyssa could see the fear in her face, could hear it in the tightness of her laugh. Try as she might, she couldn't hide it. It was the same with everyone else around them.

Ramon unclipped his seatbelt. “I'm going to check on her.”

“I just did a little while ago. I tried to give her some water, but she didn't want any. And I didn't give her any pills.”

He settled back in his seat and sighed unhappily.

Lyssa pushed her door open. She couldn't take being so close to him. “Shinji probably needs to pee.”

He didn't stop her.

The car behind them, a maroon Cadillac, had pulled close to the van's bumper, giving Lyssa just enough room to open the doors, but not enough to swing them wide. The occupants, an older couple, well-tanned and expensively-dressed, had a matching set of white terriers asleep on their laps. The people eyed Lyssa suspiciously as she sidled across the narrow space. She thought about giving them a dirty look.

The door made a heavy metallic sound as she unlatched and opened it. The noise woke the terriers, which immediately began to bark at her. Their sharp yips, loud through the couple's open windows, shattered the quiet and made her heart skip. She could hear the elderly couple trying to silence the dogs, but they wouldn't obey their owners.

Someone, somewhere, shouted, “Shut those damn, yappin' things up!”

Everyone was on edge.

She studied the road, the cars shining in the moonlight. Nothing moved.

No, wait. There was something, a long ways back. A shifting of the shadows. A figure moving between the cars.

“Mama? What's the matter?”

She ignored Cassie's question and strained her eyes. She wanted to tell the couple to be quiet, to shut their dogs up.

“Mama?”

“Shush!”

The shadow shifted again. Then a twinkle, a reflection off of someone's dome light. Lyssa exhaled in relief. It was the father returning with fuel. She watched as he materialized, a lighter gray against the darker black. His shoulders were hunched from the strain of the full gas cans. She wondered how far he'd had to go to find it. And how much he'd had to pay.

The couple finally managed to get the dogs to stop barking. They were perched on their owner's laps, watching her intently. They were restless, tapping their forepaws on the dash with nervous energy, their bodies quivering. She could hear them growling.

The father was getting closer.

A glass bottle shattered somewhere. Someone laughed and whooped drunkenly.

It was definitely going to be a long night.

She turned back to the van door. Cassie was sitting up now, her wan face hovering in the darkness. “I just came to see if Shinji needed to pee. I didn't mean to wake you.”

“I wasn't sleeping. I was listening.”

“To what?”

“The electricity inside my head.”

Lyssa frowned. “Are you hungry?” She felt the girl's forehead, found it warm and sweaty, though no more than her own. It was a balmy night, made more so by the afternoon's heat radiating off the roadway.

“I ate a cracker. It didn't taste very good.” She started to sit up.

“They're stale. Can you move to the side? Let me take Shinji.”

Lyssa reached in and grabbed the dog's collar to pull him out.

Behind her, the terriers exploded into a barrage of barks, startling Lyssa. She swore under her breath.

“Shut those damn yappers!” someone yelled.

More laughter.

The old couple called their dogs, but it didn't help. The barking only got worse. Lyssa glanced over her shoulder, scowling. She was sure Shinji's appearance was what had upset them. But the terriers weren't even looking out the front of the car. They were barking out the back window.

The father with the Mets jersey was closer now, maybe eight or nine cars away, a fuel can in each hand and a bag under his arm. He seemed oblivious to the noise.

“Jesus Christ,” a woman shouted from beside them. “Control those mutts!”

Shinji was growling now. Lyssa could feel him trembling. He was pushing against her, trying to get out.

Five cars away now. The terriers weren't stopping.

The man was looking up now, frowning at them. He passed a semi truck. Its running lights cast an orange pall over his face.

Shinji was frantic, now leaping at Lyssa's back.

She turned and shoved him back into the van. “Move back, Cassie,” she hissed.
“Now!”

“What's wrong back there?” Ramon asked.

The terriers were frenetic.
Shut up!
Lyssa screamed in her head.
Shut them the fuck up!

She pushed herself into the van and swiveled around to pull the door closed behind her.

The father was only two cars back now. He stopped, puzzled, and began to turn around, as if he thought he'd accidentally passed his own car.

No!
she wanted to yell at him.
It's up here! Hurry! Get inside!

He started to step back the way he'd come. But then he stopped again and turned once more, this time to face the darkness off the side of the road.

The terriers stopped barking and began to whine.

The man dropped his fuel cans and began to run.

From the shadows off the side of the road came the first moans.

 

“It's happening!” Lyssa shouted.

She pulled the doors behind her, but they wouldn't close all the way.

“What?” Ramon asked. She could hear the impatience in his voice. “What's happening?”

“Close your window! Ramon, shut your—”

His shouts of surprise cut her off: “What the hell? No! Get off me!”

Lyssa tried shutting the back door again, but it felt like something was pulling on it, trying to yank it out of her hand. Outside on the road, she could hear screaming. Cars were starting. Horns were blasting. Something fell against the side of the van and slid down.

Behind her, Ramon was struggling to get the keys into the ignition. He couldn't shut the window without the key. The interior lights flickered on, then off as his door opened and shut. He was yelling, ordering someone to get back. There was panic in his voice.

A hand reached into the gap in front of Lyssa's face, the fingers brushing her cheek. They were cold — colder than the night had grown — and the skin felt like plastic. She screamed and tried again to shut the door.
“Why. Won't. This. Close?”

It kept wanting to bounce back. The harder she pulled the harder it resisted.

She felt another hand flutter against her knee and she shrieked at the sight of the mutilated fingers, the nails ripped away, the beds blackened with clotted blood and dirt. A large gash covered the length of the forearm, the wound's edges shredded and torn away. She stared at it, mesmerized by the sight of the underlying sinew, the muscles rippling over it. Something inside shimmered, scaly-looking, wet. With a horrified gasp, she realized she was seeing exposed bone. In places it appeared to have been chewed on, all the way down to the marrow.

She felt her stomach heave.

Cassie was pushing against her, crying out, snapping Lyssa back into the moment. Lyssa lashed out with her foot and kicked the bloody hand away while pushing at the other one with her hand. The door was being pulled from her fingers. She could feel her grip on the handle beginning to slip. “No!” she yelled, and swung again with her free hand.

The van was shaking now, sounding as if a thousand hands were drumming on it. How many were there? Where had they all come from?

She wanted to yell at Ramon to start the van and get them out of here, but she was dimly aware that he was already trying. She could feel the engine turning over, catching roughly and shaking the van, stalling.