S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (100 page)

Cassie's death had utterly destroyed what was left of them.

And so it was an opportunity for Drew. He could use them, use their expertise. He just needed to get them off the island.

“The bridges are out of the question for you two. And the ferry terminals and airports have been shut down. They want absolute control over who's coming and going.”

“It doesn't matter,” Myssa mumbled. “I won't leave Cassie.”

“Honey,” Ramon said. He shifted seats, slipping into the chair next to his wife. He reached out to place his arm around her, then hesitated. He looked over at Drew, who nodded once in encouragement. “Honey, she'll be safe here. She can't get out, and Drew has promised to stay and keep watch over her.”

Drew took her silence as a good sign. “There are thousands of living still on the island. I need to try and help them if I can. And afterward, I'll be working ever harder on a cure.”

He paused to let that sink in before continuing.

“I need people like you on the outside, people sympathetic to the cause and with the proper scientific training. I have friends out there. They'll get you set up with new identifications, put you into positions where you'll be able to work on this problem with me. Together, we'll figure out how to reverse the reanimation process. And when we do . . . .”

He waited for Lyssa to look up. Finally, she did.

“When we do, we'll fix Cassie.”

She stared at him for a long time, nothing showing on her face. “You don't actually believe that,” she finally said.

“I do, actually. With all my heart.”

“You don't know!” she shrieked, pounding on the table. “How could you know? Oh God, what have I done? I should've just let her die!”

“No,” Ramon cried. He leaned into his wife and shook her. “No! Don't say that. You did it because you love her.”

“I know it's possible,” Drew quietly said, and he was relieved when she didn't demand he explain himself. How could he tell them he was their proof?

* * *

They reached Laroda several hours after nightfall, after a long day of slow, careful travel over back streets and gravel roads, avoiding the more densely populated areas. Once, they came upon a fresh accident, the sounds of a baby's cries coming from inside the car. But it was surrounded by hordes of infected wanting to get in. They drove on.

They had taken Drew's car, leaving Lyssa's car parked inside the garage with a full tank of gasoline. “For when you return.” He didn't tell them that it might be months from now. Or even years. He didn't tell them that he truthfully expected never to see them ever again.

There had been a moment, back at the house, when Drew thought she might refuse to come after all. The boy had stupidly gotten Cassie riled up again with his childish antics and she was moaning and hitting the door. But Lyssa had walked right past it and out to the car without a word. The only indication he had that she'd even heard was in the way her face twitched whenever Cassie slammed the door. She didn't even pause when they heard the shower curtain get torn down.

He stopped the car on the bridge spanning the waterway separating the main part of the island from Laroda. “There's a motorboat tied up underneath, covered in brush,” he told them. “That's how you'll get out. But first, we need to go to the lab. We need those results.”

With the boy's help, he could've retrieved the papers himself, but he wanted the Stemples to feel like they'd already begun the next phase.

They drove the remaining several hundred feet to the buildings. With the electricity out, the security lights were off and the structures rose like ghosts in the moonlight. Ramon got out and pulled opened the gate and Drew pulled through. At the front entrance, he grabbed a flashlight, shattered the glass door, and the three adults went in.

“I'll start the emergency generator.”

The hallways were unnaturally cold, the walls and ceiling hovering too close. The muffled sound of their footfalls on the thin carpeting seemed much too loud. A moment later, the lights flickered on.

They stopped in Ramon's office first, but other than tucking a few papers into his bag, he left everything else behind. “I forgot my tablet at home,” he said, though he didn't sound very upset. He didn't sound like anything.

Lyssa went into her office and watched as the boy worked his magic on the printer. The machine whirred to life and began to spit out pages, which Drew collected and tucked away.

When they were finished, she went and sat down behind her desk.

“It's time to go,” Drew said.

She didn't move for a moment.

“Lyssa?”

She reached over and opened a drawer and pulled out an old canvas bag from some conference in Philadelphia she'd attended as a graduate student. She began to fill it with random items off her desk and her shelves. In went a book, a stapler. She yanked the phone cord from the wall and threw the unit in. In went all of the baubles from one shelf, but none from any of the other shelves. Finally, she reached into her pocket and pulled out Cassie's New York snow globe. She stared at it for a moment, watching the plastic snowflakes drift and swirl over buildings which no longer existed. Then she dropped it in, too.

“Lyssa.”

She looked up at them then, her eyes glinting in the light from the hallway. She nodded once, sighed, and went to the door. Turning back for one final look inside, she said, “Burn it down. All of it, Drew. Burn it until there's nothing left.”

 

At a quarter to one in the morning, Drew guided the motorboat as close to the rocky shore as he dared, then cut the engine. He turned to the boy first.

“Are you staying?”

The boy nodded.

“Okay. I don't know if you'll ever see your mom again.”

“It's okay. I like it here. It's more fun. And I can help you.”

Drew frowned and seemed to reconsider.

Turning to Ramon and Lyssa, he offered his hand. “I have a friend who can get you set up at a research hospital in Greenwich.”

“Greenwich?” Ramon repeated.

“Connecticut. There's a reason I'd like you to go there.” He turned to Lyssa. “There's a little girl in that town. I need you to check in on her, discretely. Do you think you could do that?”

Lyssa frowned. It was the first emotion she'd expressed since departing the house. “Who is she?”

“My daughter.”

The boy's glare turned poisonous, but Drew ignored him.

“Please. She doesn't know about me. Would you be able to do that? She's . . . special.”

“Special how?”

“Someday,” he replied. “Someday, when you're ready, I'll tell you.”

Lyssa nodded, hesitantly at first. Then, as her eyes seemed to clear, she seemed to understand what he was asking. He was trusting her to watch over his daughter, just as she was trusting him to watch over hers.

“It will be dangerous. There's a man there, her grandfather, who won't like it.”

The corners of Drew's lips curled up slightly, as if he were enjoying a private joke.

“In fact, I'm pretty sure it'll drive him crazy.”

He watched them slip away over the choppy sea, the chug of the motor quickly swallowed up by the sound of the water lapping at the rocks.

“Come, Enoch,” he said, turning away with a heavy sigh. He trudged back to the car, glad to have his son by his side where he could keep an eye on him. The boy was damaged — emotionally, psychologically — though how badly he had no clear idea. He feared he'd only begun to understand the depth of the child's depravity. He was sure he could fix him given enough time.

But first, he had more pressing work to do. He needed to collect some blood from himself. Lots of it. Because the worst of the outbreak was yet to come.

 

Eight years later.

The man known as Sergio Martinez leaned stiffly back in his seat and waited for the plane to begin taxiing from the terminal at SeaTac Airport. He was cautiously pleased with the way the trip had turned out. After nearly a decade of loneliness and heartache, things were finally beginning to look up. He thought he'd never be able to feel this way again. But here he was, actually daring to allow himself an iota of hope.

His colleagues at the animal laboratory had been eager to receive the new samples. They'd treated him to an especially fancy meal at one of the city's finest seafood restaurants. It was a nice gesture, but that's all it really was, and they knew it. There was no way they could repay the risks he'd taken over the past few days just to get the tubes across the country from his base in Boston. He was, regardless, more than happy to do it. He had his own selfish reasons.

Progress on their research had been painfully slow. Soon after the disaster on Long Island, his sponsor had shared news within their network that he'd discovered a way to prevent the disease from killing those who had been bitten. It had required a rather unorthodox set of injections of whole blood from an immune person. Over time, the process had been refined and improved. The injection site went from venous to spinal. The treated still required continual monitoring and repeated injections at fairly regular intervals, so they were, as yet, unable to be mainstreamed back into society.

Sadly, it wasn't the cure they had all hoped for, but at least it kept the disease at bay. For the afflicted, it gave them hope that they might one day be entirely free of the virus.

That day had always seemed just out of reach. Until now.

This new serum had real potential, coming from the stem cells of another immune individual: his sponsor's daughter.

He replayed in his mind the conversation he'd had just before leaving to fly out, smiling to himself as he remembered the look on the doctor's face when she walked in on him in that examination room at the hospital.

* * *

“Mister . . . ?” the doctor had said, staring at his medical chart instead of up at him.

“Martinez,” he'd replied. “Hello, Lyssa.”

She'd gasped and uttered his real name before catching herself. The look in her eyes told him she clearly been taken aback by how much he'd changed over the years. She, on the other hand, looked remarkably the same, just a little older.

Ramon smiled, the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Long time, no see.”

“I thought you hated beards.”

“A little facial hair goes a long way to concealing one's identity. You should try it some time.”

She scowled at his attempt at humor.

He reached out and touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers and smiled again. “I've missed you.”

“You were the one who decided to leave.”

“Yes,” he replied, simply.

“Why are you here, Ramon? You know how dangerous—”

“It's Sergio. That's what I go by now. Sergio Martinez.”

“Sounds like a porn star.” She set the tablet down on the counter and crossed her arms. “It says you're here for an allergy shot.”

He nodded. “That's the excuse. I need some more of that girl's blood you've been collecting and sending out.”

“Why? Why not just go through the usual channels?”

He stood up from the bed and gently placed his hands on her shoulders. “We think we've done it this time, Lyssa.”

“Anne,” she snapped. “It's Anne now. Doctor Anne White. Lyssa's dead.”

He was unfazed by her curtness. “Of course. Listen, we've got a lead on a way to eradicate the virus. If so, we can start fixing the Infecteds.”

He left their daughter's name unspoken. It didn't need to be said. It was there, dangling clear as day in the air between them.

She narrowed her eyes at him, clearly doubtful. And maybe more than a little resentful for having been left mostly out of the loop all these years. The most she knew was to collect the girl's blood when it came to her, the girl Drew had said was his daughter. Oh, and what a shock it had been finding out who the girl's grandfather had been! But the Colonel had acted as if he didn't even recognize Lyssa. Lyssa, on the other hand, harbored no such illusions.

So, year after year, she'd waited, patiently, secretly collecting the girl's blood and preparing it under the pretext of studying her allergies. She'd stored it, packaged it up, sent it out upon request, sometimes to a lab in Boston, sometimes Seattle, sometimes Cleveland.

And all the while, she'd seethed with resentment.

She knew it was because they all worried about her mental well-being. She'd had a breakdown soon after escaping, had even tried to take her own life. But that was well in her past now. It took years to rebuild their trust in her. Years to gather her own information and reagents. She'd begun her own little research program.

Of course, they were protecting themselves by limiting her access to information. They couldn't afford to jeopardize their work until they were sure.

“It's time to bring you into the fold,” Ramon told her. He reached down and pulled something out of his bag. “Take this,” he said.

“My old desk phone? Why the hell would I want something that doesn't work anymore?” She wasn't even sure why she'd brought it with her in the first place when they fled Long Island. Or any of the other junk which now littered her office's spartan shelves. Her only explanation was that she'd been in shock still.

“We had it . . . altered. It looks like a nonworking relic, and to the casual observer it is.” He pointed to the broken second button along the bottom. “Use a pencil to push that down for ten seconds and it'll connect you to a secret satellite communications network. After I leave, he wants to speak with you. He'll explain everything we've done. Honey, this is big. I'm sure of it.”

“Why can't you just tell me now?”

“Because I have to hurry. I'm supposed to be on a chartered jet in three hours. With that blood.”