S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (93 page)

She followed his footsteps. He was gasping now, coughing, spitting the flies from his mouth. She heard the door whisper shut, and suddenly she was alone. He'd left without her.

The flies were in her ears, struggling weakly to untangle themselves from her hair. She swatted wildly at them, lost her balance and fell. She felt them squish beneath her hands, felt their tiny legs and wings twitching on her skin, gore-bloated bodies exploding and releasing their vile contents, bilious sacs of congealed yellow fat and unlaid eggs.

Somehow, she found the door. She worked the knob and pushed it open. She heard Ramon on the stairs, struggling. She caught up to him as he reached the door to the kitchen.

And then it was flung open and light and fresh air was streaming in.

Ramon fell through, Cassie a limp ragdoll over his shoulder. They tumbled to the floor. Ramon was hacking, spitting dead flies onto the floor.

Lyssa slammed the door shut behind her and fell beside them. But then she saw the feet beneath the table, three pairs of them standing in the doorway.

And she realized they weren't alone.

 

“Drew noticed the trail coming from your house through the wet grass,” Marion explained. He was carrying Cassie in his arms. “That's how we knew to check next door for you. What the hell were you doing over there?”

Neither Ramon nor Lyssa answered.

Drew led the way. He kept an eye out for the infected. Ramon and Lyssa came next.

An old man dressed only in bloody pajama bottoms, his skin a pale green in the dim light, lurched toward them from the road. Half his chest had been blown away, and his left arm was missing from the elbow down. Neither injury seemed to be bothering him any. The urine bag dangling between his legs, however, kept tripping him up. And the oxygen tubing wrapped around his face jerked his head back whenever the gas tank attached to the other end of it snagged along the ground.

The other man who had arrived with Drew and Marion slipped behind the old zombie, easily ducking out of the way as it swiped its intact arm and stump at him. Lyssa didn't recognize him. She eyed him warily as he disconnected the tank, then slipped the end into the Stemple's mailbox and shut the door. Once he was satisfied the old man would stay put, he jogged up the walk to join the others on the Stemple's porch.

A young boy stepped out of the house. “It's about time!” he said. “They're coming. I've seen at least fifty.” He actually sounded excited.

“Stop exaggerating,” Drew growled. “And get your ass inside the house where I told you to stay.”

“Aw, I want to help. Why can't I help?” He held up an axe. The edge glinted, but was clean. He gave it an experimental swing and accidentally wedged it into the porch railing.

“Watch where you're swinging that, kid!” the stranger said. He grabbed it away from the boy. “You heard the old man. Fun time's over.”

“What fun? I was inside the whole time. That's not fun.”

They piled into the house and shut the door. Marion immediately took Cassie to the living room. Ramon and Lyssa followed.

“Stay here,” the stranger told the boy.

“And you're an asshole.”

“Enough!” Drew yelled. “I don't want to hear that kind of language. Both of you!”

He dropped to his knees before Cassie and leaned over her. For a second Lyssa thought he was sniffing her face. When he looked up, it was to frown at Marion. “Where's the bite?”

Marion reached over and gently unwrapped the sheet from around Cassie's body. He showed Drew the mark on her arm. “It happened a few hours ago, just as I described. She had wandered outside. Her father found her down the street.”

Drew leaned over again. This time he stuck his nose close to the wound. This time the inhale was clearly audible.

He
is
smelling her!
Lyssa stepped forward, alarmed.
What the hell is he doing?

“This bite is self-inflicted,” Drew said, straightening up. “She bit herself.” He raised Cassie's arm and held it to her mouth. The distance and angle matched.

Ramon shook his head. His face was red. “Bullshit! Cassie wouldn't bite herself hard enough to draw blood! Why would she?”

“Attention, maybe.” He stood up and faced them. “I'm not a psychiatrist, but given what I've seen from you two lately, that would be my guess.”

“Drew!” Lyssa exclaimed. “Why are you talking like that?”

“Don't assume you know me,” he said. All his former charm was gone. “Because you don't.”

Lyssa blinked back her confusion. She opened her mouth but she was too stunned to speak.

Marion stepped between. “Let's focus, people.” He turned to Drew. “Are you saying she's not infected?”

“No, she is. This child is very, very sick. Can't you feel the heat coming off her body? Her eyes are sunken and her lips are badly chapped. This has been going on for days, maybe even a week, not hours. I can't understand how you two haven't noticed it before.”

“We've been a little busy trying to get away from dead people!” Ramon snapped.

“You've been too busy running away from your son.”

“How dare you,” Lyssa shouted. “You son of a bitch!”

Marion stepped between them. “This isn't the time. What are you saying, Drew? How can it be weeks? The reanimation virus—”

“It's not that. It doesn't smell like reanimation virus. Those who have been infected by it have a distinctive smell, like burning plastic.”

“Oh, cut the bullshit!” Ramon shouted, stepping around Marion. “You fucking, lying, sneaky coward! Why don't you just admit it that you have no fucking idea what's wrong with her? Marion called you here because he thought you could help, but it's obvious you're hiding the fact that you can't. You don't have a fucking clue and you're trying to hide it by saying it's something else!”

Drew's face didn't register any surprise. “I suspect Cassie's got rabies.”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“That's your diagnosis?” Ramon exclaimed. “Of course it is. You can diagnose it because you can smell it!” Ramon shook his head. “All the time and money people spend with quantitative diagnostic tests when we could've just sent them to you and your magical mystery nose!”

“Wait, Ramon,” Lyssa said. She held up her hand.

“No! We're wasting our time, Lyssa. He can't help us. We need to leave, find help elsewhere.”

But Lyssa wasn't listening. She turned and stumbled into the hallway. A moment later they heard the beep of the answering machine and the last message began to play.

This is the Woodbury Animal Clinic calling with results on the animal you provided us on Tuesday. This call is for Veronica Mueller.

“Ronnie?” Lyssa exclaimed. “But—”

Ms. Mueller, we were unable to reach you at the primary number you listed on our contact form. In cases such as this, our guidelines require us to follow up with your secondary contact number as provided on your submission paperwork. Again, this message is for Ms. Veronica Mueller.

Although our preliminary in-house analysis did not identify the presence of a human disease threat in the bat you brought to us, a repeat assay came back slightly positive. We sent it to the state lab for further testing and verification.

The others had gathered around Lyssa now.

We regret to inform you that the state lab confirmed the presence of rabies virus in the bat. We strongly advise that you or any other individual who may have handled this animal contact us immediately for treatment options. Rabies is a serious disease which, if left untreated before symptoms arise, is both untreatable and fatal. Please consider visiting your personal physician to receive prophylactic injections. Symptoms typically arise within days of infection, but in rare cases the disease can remain asymptomatic for up to several weeks or lie dormant for years.

Again, once the symptoms begin to show, the disease is one hundred percent fatal.

Our number here is—

Drew pressed the
STOP
button.

“I don't understand,” Ramon said. He looked lost. “I don't understand what this is about.”

“Lyssa,” Drew said, “I'm so sorry.”

But Lyssa just blinked at him. “The moment you said rabies, I remembered. But I was certain you were wrong because I'd already made sure Cassie wasn't infected.”

Ramon stepped into her line of sight. “Lyssa, what are you talking about? You knew about this?”

She shook her head. “We hit a possum with the car a couple weeks ago. There was blood everywhere, but the poor thing wasn't dead. I had to kill it. It was— It was horrible.” A strangled cry escaped her throat. “There was a second animal, a baby. Cassie found it. I was— I couldn't do it. Cassie did.”

“Stop it,” Ramon told her. He gripped her shoulders and shook. “You're not making any sense.”

“She did it because I couldn't.”

“Did what, Lyssa? Cassie did what?” Ramon's voice was rising in pitch. “What did Cassie do?”

“She killed it. There was blood everywhere, but most had washed off in the rain. I checked her after we got to the lab and didn't see any new cuts. But to be sure, I stopped on the way home and picked the possums up. The in-house assay was negative, but I wanted it sent to the state lab anyway. I thought this message was a follow up to that.” She lowered her face into her hands. “I thought I'd done everything right. I try so hard to protect her and I fail. I tried.”

Ramon's face was white as a sheet. The look in his eyes was insane. He looked as if he would either hit Lyssa or faint. “I don't understand. What does this have to do with Ronnie. What bat?”

Lyssa went over and started removing Cassie's clothes, stripping her down to her underpants. She started checking her skin, poring over it inch by inch. “Brad said Ronnie was sticking around because she was worried about Cassie. He said she mentioned something about a bat.”

“But she would've told us if Cassie had been bitten,” Ramon cried. “Wouldn't she?”

Lyssa didn't answer. She was holding Cassie's leg up. She ran her thumb over the skin and whimpered.

There was a small scab just above her heel, a series of tiny holes spread out over an arc. Opposite it was a near-perfect mirror image.

“A bite?”

The edges of the wound were pink.

“That's why she hasn't been acting herself lately,” Lyssa whispered. “Why she's been having mood swings. It's why she hasn't been drinking. And she was afraid of the water. That's what happens. They get afraid of the water with rabies.”

Ramon turned to Drew. “There's nothing you can do?” he pleaded.

“If it were the reanimation virus,” Drew answered, “then I might've been able to help. Maybe. But I can't help with this. I'm so sorry,” he repeated.

“No,” Lyssa said, shaking her head. She was delirious now, in anguish. She slipped to the floor. She couldn't understand how this could be, how a simple bat bite could somehow be worse than being bitten by one of those dead things walking around outside.

Ramon sat down. His own eyes had glazed over, too. His face was ashen with shock. “How could this happen? How could—” He gestured toward the front door, then the back, his jaw opening and closing wordlessly. “Why didn't Ronnie say something when it happened?”

“I'm afraid the best we can do now is make her comfortable,” Marion said.

“Maybe not.” Drew nodded to the others. “Give us a moment?”

Silently, the two men and the boy filed out of the room.

“There may be something we can try. I don't know if it'll work. I don't want to get your hopes up, as it's an extremely long shot.”

Lyssa turned toward him. It took such effort, as if her neck were as stiff as a tree trunk and her head a boulder.

“There have been a couple reports of people surviving rabies. It's very rare and requires some rather . . . extreme measures. Even after almost a century since it was first attempted, it's still highly controversial.”

“The Milwaukee Protocol,” Lyssa whispered. She shook her head. The chances were practically nil.

Drew nodded. “It's believed that if the person can survive the infection long enough — and that's a big if — then the body develops its own antibodies and eventually clears the virus. It requires putting Cassie into a coma for several weeks.”

He stepped back and looked around them and sighed. “But we're talking about long-term monitoring, constant medical intervention, palliative care, a feeding tube, cardiovascular and respiratory monitoring. Intravenous antibiotics and antivirals. None of that can be done here.”

“There's a hospital about five miles from here,” Ramon uttered.

“The hospitals are empty. Emergency staff have all been evacuated.”

“Then we'll take her somewhere else. We'll get her off the island.”

“The moment you try to get her into a hospital on the mainland, you'll disappear. The Ames people won't allow you to survive. Not now. Not knowing what you know.”

“Then we do it ourselves. Lyssa is a medical doctor. We break into the hospital and get what we need and bring it here. We've got solar power. We can survive for months if we have to.”

Drew sighed again. “I don't want to get your hopes up.”

“Just tell me what we need,” Lyssa said. “This is my fault. I'm the one who wanted Cassie to have a nanny. I trusted her.” She turned to Ramon. “You were right. I trust everyone else except you. I'll go and get what we need.”

“No,” Drew said. “Ramon will go. Take Marion with you. Lyssa, you stay here with Cassie. She needs her mother.”

“It'll be risky,” Marion said. “The infected are all over the place out there now. And it's only going to get worse.”