S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (157 page)

I shake my head. “Garages. Better chance that the gasoline is good.”

“
Since when did you become such an expert?”

“
Since this morning.”

We find a pickup truck in the garage of the second house, but it's a diesel.

“
Wasting time,” Reggie says.

Time is all I can think about. It's twenty-five miles to LaGuardia and we have less than forty five minutes. And we still have to get through the Gameland wall.

We hit pay dirt at the third house.

“
Another truck,” Reggie says.

“
But it's not a diesel,” I say, spinning off the gas cap. “Start sucking.”

“
Great. Just what I need when the bombs hit, a mouthful of flammable liquid.” He sucks and spits and sucks and spits and soon it starts gushing out and onto the floor. But when he tries to angle the end into the gas can, the hose snaps in half.

“
Try again. Bend it slowly next time.”

I find an old milk jug in a recycling bin and bring it over. The traces of milk inside have long since dried up. I shake the flakes out and hand the jug over. “Fill this one, too.”

He gives me a dirty look. More gasoline sloshes onto the floor of the garage, but now I can see the change coming over him, the first glimmer of hope.

He finishes filling the can and switches the hose to the milk jug.

“
I'm going to die with this nasty taste in my mouth.”

“
You're not going—”

Crash!

The garage door rattles, but Reggie doesn't even look up. “I hear you knocking,” he mumbles, “but you can't come in.”

More banging. And moaning.

“
Wonder how they knew we were here.”

“
Does it matter, Jess? We can probably go out the back way.” He pulls the hose out and asks if there are more cans to fill up. Gasoline splashes over the floor, spreading. The fumes bite into my nose.

“
That's it. Let's go.”

We slip through the house, Reggie carrying the two-and-a-half-gallon jug while I have the smaller one. We each have a knife in our other hand.

“
Looks like they're mostly out front,” he says, peering cautiously out a window. But while we stand there, several turn toward us, as if they'd heard, and they begin to head for our hiding place.

“
Okay, that's freaky.”

“
I think they smell fear.”

“
I'm not afraid.”

“
Then it must be your stink.”

Reggie checks the drawers in the kitchen and yelps triumphantly when he finds a box of safety matches. I don't ask why he needs them.

The back door squeaks a little, but the porch is empty. So is the back yard. We step out.

A wooden fence borders it on three sides.

“
Left or right?” he asks, but as we stand there, the Undead appear around both sides of the house. “Okay. Looks like we're going straight.”

“
Are you crazy?” I whisper.

“
Trust me!” He hands me his knife, grabs my jug of gas, then jumps off the porch.

“
Hey!” I cry.

“
Come on!” He heads straight for the back fence and for a split second I think he's going to smash his way right through it. I want to yell at him to stop, that we don't know what's on the other side, but then he turns. “Come on, Jessie! Now or never!”

I fly down the steps, the Undead right behind me. This is suicide, I think to myself. But as I come, I see what he's doing. He uncaps the milk jug and starts splashing the gasoline in an arc around him on the grass.

“
Jump over it!”

I do, slamming into the fence. It rocks, creaking against rotting posts. Before I even have a chance to turn, the smell of burning fuel pinches my nose. The heat sears my skin. It stops the Undead in their tracks.

And leaves us with no place to run.

 

Reggie's still laughing
when we get to the highway. Actually freaking laughing. I'm livid and slap his hands away when he tries to help me over the fence.

“
I do come up with some good ideas sometimes.”

“
As I recall, it was your idea to come here in the first place.”

This shuts him up and I immediately feel guilty. I think we all know by now that none of this was his idea. We all deserve the blame for coming, but it wasn't his idea.

We scurry up the berm. Eric is standing outside the car, keeping watch. When he sees us, he frantically waves us over.

“
We might have a way to get through the wall,” he says.

“
How?”

I watch as Reggie goes over and begins to empty the fuel into the tank. He tries to listen over the noise it makes. Behind us, black smoke rises up into the sky. Eric eyes it, but doesn't ask. Several IUs have followed us through the broken fence, which means they got through the flames. In fact, some of them are still on fire.

“
You won't like it.”

“
What's your plan?”

“
Not mine, Micah's.”

Reggie's head snaps up. “I won't have anything to do with that idiot.”

Eric holds his hands up. “Would you just listen for once? Tell me if this makes any sense.”

He goes over and opens the side door. “Tell them what you told me,” he says.

Micah looks over at us. His eyes come to rest on me and there's something in them that startles me. It almost looks like remorse.

Reggie pulls me back. “Don't believe a word he says. That asshole got us here. Why would he want to help us now?”

“
Because we're his only ticket out of this place.”

“
He needs to be gagged. Then blindfolded and shot. No, fed to the—”

“
Just hear him out, Reg,” I say, keeping my voice low.

Micah purses his lips, inhales for a moment, lets it out. “None of this was supposed to happen,” he begins.

“
Just get to part where you get us through the wall,” I tell him.

But he tries again: “Why do you think I hung around back there at the hill? Why do you think I came back from Brookhaven after you left me there? I came to save your sorry asses.”

I reach over and slip the rifle off Eric's shoulder. He lets me take it. He can see the look in my eyes. I'm done bullshitting. I point the gun at Micah's head and tell him he's got exactly ten seconds before I put a bullet in his brain.

“
Okay, okay. But you may want to hear me out on the way.” He looks past my hip. I don't turn, but I hear Reggie curse under his breath and say they're coming.

“
Eight seconds. Start her up,” I tell Reg.

“
I need my tablet.”

“
Six.”

The engine whines as Reggie cranks the ignition. It doesn't catch.

“
Keep pumping it,” Eric says.

“
Four seconds.”

“
We need to get to the wall!”

The engine cranks, catches, coughs, stalls.

“
Two.”

“
I can get the wall back online. I swear it!”

The engine roars to life.

I hold the rifle steady, feel the tension in the trigger. Micah closes his eyes.

Finally, I turn it to the side.

“
Show us.”

 

“
How long, Micah?” I ask.

“
Damn it, Jessie,” Reggie says. “It's almost six o'clock! Thirty…seven minutes before we're dead!”

“
You hear that?” I say. “Thirty-seven minutes to fix the wall, get us through it and to LaGuardia. You better hope and pray this works.”

“
You can't trust that fucker! What if he's trying to take everything down with us? He knows he's dead. He knows if he goes back, he's going to jail. And a trial? He'll be lucky if they don't do a public conscription.”

“
Reggie, shut up.”

“
Damn it, Jessie. Think!”

Micah's fingers are a blur as he finishes the code he was working on when the boys interrupted him back on the hill. It's scrolling too fast for me to figure out what he's doing. He talks as he codes: “It's the Arc firewall that's the problem. Their coders overreacted to the hack.”

“
The hack
you
wrote.”

“
The one Ashley wrote.”

“
Which you used.”

He shakes his head.

Eric shuffles nervously behind us, his eyes taking in all the equipment inside the tiny shack, a remote link-up site. We'd gotten lucky and found it within minutes, realizing what it was as soon as we saw the Arc logo on the door. I don't know how Micah knew about them. He claimed to have seen others like it back when he was looking for rope a few days ago.

And yet, here you are, giving him free reign to screw up Arc's network. And access to who knows what else. Defense systems, everything.

Shut up.

Too bad you won't be around to see SSC take over full control. All because of you.

I believe him when he said he'd get us out.

Then you're a fool.

Maybe I am.

Maybe I am just a hopeless optimist. And maybe I'm still not sure he's as bad as we all think he is.

“
Arc has been trying to fight it,” Micah says. “I tracked each of the updates in the registry. The hack almost took control—actually did for a bit a couple days ago. When the power went out yesterday, when the Players and Omegas went rogue, that was because Arc activated a new super-powerful firewall. Basically isolated us from the outside world. They fixed that, but the problem is, the firewall itself is too strong.”

“
How can a firewall be too strong?”

“
It's starting to block and attack native programs.” He swipes one screen closed and opens another. They all look the same to me, but he seems to recognize them immediately. “Think of the firewall as a body's immune system. There's a delicate balance between being too weak and too strong. Too weak and your body allows all kinds of diseases to get in. You get sick, and you die.”

“
Computers aren't human beings, shithead.”

“
It's an analogy, Reg. Just try and stay with me.”

Reggie kicks a metal panel out of frustration, making it rattle.

“
But if the immune system is too strong, it begins to attack its host. That's what the Arc firewall is doing. All SST has to do is sit back and wait for the codex to eat itself. Arc's installing patches to fix their native programs, but that's the wrong approach. Giving the firewall and the virus both something to chew on is the key.”

“
So, what are you doing?”

“
Hacking them both.”

“
To do what?”

“
I'm going to try and kill them.”

“
You kill them and SST will have unfettered access,” Eric says.

“
Maybe. But if I don't, we die.” He lifts his hands from the screen and sits up. “It's your choice. I'll stop right now if you want me to.”

The three of us look at each other. Nobody speaks. Nobody wants to be the one to decide.

“
Do it,” Eric says. He nods once.

“
Are you sure?” I ask him.

“
No, but we're out of options, aren't we? We can sort out the consequences afterward, whatever they may be.”

Micah waits. Finally I nod. “Whatever you have to do,” I tell Micah, “it damn well better be quick. Even if it works, we may not even have enough time to get to the airport.”

He resumes coding.

I pull Eric aside and ask him about the tunnel, about whether it'll still be open.

“
Assuming SSC hasn't blocked it, it should be,” he answers. But the look on his face doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

“
How much longer?” I ask Micah.

He shrugs, doesn't answer right away. “Hard to say. Once I'm finished, I'll need to test it. Half hour, maybe.”

“
You got three minutes,” I tell him. “Keep an eye on him, Eric. I'm going out to check on Kelly and Reg.”

Five minutes later they all come out. Micah's got his hands tied up again behind him again.

“
It's done.”

“
And?”

“
Well,” Micah says, shaking his head, “we'll see. Both the firewall and the hack are still running, but I've diverted them to allow the basic system processes to function unhindered.”

“
Is the wall up? That's all I want to know! It doesn't feel up.”

“
No time to run any diagnostics.”

“
Can we just get in the fucking car and go?” Reggie says. “Christ.”

We get in and he cranks the engine. It sputters and coughs. He tries again, pumping the gas, but the engine just lets out a choked belch.

“
Shit,” he breathes, and tries again with the same result.

“
Take it easy,” Eric tells him. “I think you just flooded it. Just give it another crank without the gas.”

“
But don't run down the battery,” I add.