S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (115 page)

It's always been about control.

“I always thought it was about profit.”

Is there a difference?

Jessie was silent for a moment. She had never been a particularly philosophical person, so to be having such a conversation with someone she was still trying to wrap her mind around being both dead and alive was more than she could handle.

You can end the war, Jess. The codex is the key. Without it—

“No! I need to get my grandfather's Link, Micah. That's our best chance to take out Arc, with a cure. Without the Undead, the codex will be useless.”

Will it?

“Of course. What else could they use it for?”

To control the living. That's what I've been trying to tell you.

“That's against the law. There are measures to prevent—”

The rules have changed, Jess. What makes you think they haven't already begun trying?

She was going to shake her head, but then realized the idea wasn't that farfetched. “Maybe,” she said with a sigh, “but I'm still getting that Link. Think of all the people we can save with a cure. It's not too late. Even for you.”

It is, Jess.

“No, it's not! Don't say that!”

Jessie, no.

“I'm serious! We can bring you back!”

Jessie, stop. You can't.

She was crying openly now. “Doctors are doing amazing things with genes and cells these days, regenerative medicine, and—”

No! I said no, Jess. Please. I don't want to be brought back. I can't imagine anyone of us would want to be brought back.

“Don't talk like that! You don't know. You're not dead!”

Listen to me, don't let this opportunity go to waste. Something's happening in the Stream. Someone's manipulating the codex. I can feel it fighting itself, and I fear something worse is about to happen. You need to stop it. Get my tablet from the mainframe and—

“It's gone, Micah! Someone took it.”

But then she remembered the tablet she'd found inside Ben's duffel. Ashley must have been the one to remove it. But now it was buried beneath the rubble of the orange building.

“I know where it is, but I'm going to Brookhaven first, Micah. After that, I'll come back for you and we can destroy the codex together.”

Jessie, please.

“No, you made your decision. I'm sorry, but I've made mine.” She stood up. “I have to do this.”

She waited for him to try and talk her out of it. But as she strode across the dusty worn floor to the front door of the crumbling church, he kept his thoughts to himself. She could still feel him inside her head, a presence. She could feel him struggling, wanting her to turn around. But all he had to do it was words, and they had already failed him.

She paused only a moment to glance back at him, then she stepped out into the unexpectedly bright light of the day. The storm clouds had finally broken apart, leaving the air humid. She shut the door and checked that it was latched.

“Stop right there, young lady,” a voice boomed from somewhere across the road.

Jessie spun around in time to see a figure disappear behind a car across the street.

“Don't you dare move a muscle. That is, unless you want me to put a bullet in your brain.”

 

Kelly ran into his first Infected in the hallway as he exited Doctor White's room, a gargantuan woman whose hospital gown didn't cover nearly as much real estate as it should have. A large chunk of her neck was gone, almost certainly down the gullet of her killer. The wound was fresh, minutes old at best, and still pumping out pints of bright red blood from the mangled jugular in a steady beat, not by the action of her inert heart but by the bellows-like compression-expansion of her body as she listed from one side of the hallway to the other.

He traced the blood trail back to its origin, to a room at the other end of the hallway, and shut the door.

He could've just turned around and headed in the other direction and the thing probably wouldn't even have noticed him. But something instinctive kicked in inside of him and he stepped over to the shambling corpse and grabbed a handful of her hair. With a grunt of effort, he slammed her head into the wall beneath the doorplate.

MAISIE
, the label indicated.
MAISIE FONTAINE. AGE 23
.

She extracted herself from the collapsed drywall, surprising Kelly. Given the damage to her skull, he'd expected her to crumple to the floor, but instead he seemed only to have startled her awake.

She turned around and hissed at him. The skin of her face was as chalky white as the plaster dust covering it. A puffy hand shot out and grabbed a handful of his cheek. He felt her nails digging in as she squeezed, felt the white hot pain of his flesh being stretched. She pulled him to her and opened her mouth and let out a moan that would have sapped the strength from most men.

As it would have his, if it had happened a month before.

Kelly slapped at the arm with his left hand while reaching up with his right, and grimly thrust his fingers into the thick flesh below the chin.

Her jaw opened and snapped shut, then opened again. He could feel her throat working, pistoning beneath his palm as she chewed off a piece of her own cheek and swallowed it. She moaned again and her mouth gaped so wide that he thought he heard the joint dislocate. Then she vomited.

The hot, chunky mess coated his arm and dripped off his elbow. It smelled like rancid orange juice and maple syrup.

This time he directed her head at the metal part of the door frame. This time her skull collapsed when it made contact. This time poor dead Maisie fell in a heap to the ground.

She'd checked out against doctor's orders.

He quickly searched each of the other rooms, calling Doctor White's name over and over again. He encountered several more Infected, but didn't bother with them. He'd already wasted too much time.

Many of the living he saw were bloody but not yet dead. They lay in pools of their own coagulating blood and vomit, moaning in pain as if practicing for the inescapable moment their bodies would enter the hell of oblivion. Their killers, it seemed to Kelly, had been more interested in sampling than in gorging themselves, as if this were some kind of macabre buffet.

He shut their doors, as well. They would die sooner or later, and when they came back he didn't need their numbers adding to the ones already on the loose.

“Doctor White?” he shouted. “It's Kelly!”

He was surprised to see some patients lying untouched in their beds. Some were awake and aware, but most were too sick. These doors he also closed.

He was nearly down to the second floor when he smelled the smoke. It filled the stairwell quickly, burning his eyes and lungs. The fire alarm started ringing, and the overhead sprinklers burst open, spraying bucketsful of water on his head and shoulders.

He slammed through the landing door and ran through the crowded hallways, sliding through the pooling water and knocking into people as he went. He didn't care if they were alive or dead. They grabbed at him, whether for help or hunger, but he pushed them all away. He didn't heed their cries.

The door to Doctor White's office was locked tight, already repaired since yesterday. Knocking yielded no response.

“It's an outbreak!” someone screamed as they ran past. “ Get your ass out of here!” The words were barely audible over the alarm.

The hallway was clearing. In the haze, Kelly could see a lone figure lying in a heap against the far wall, their body jerking as they coughed. He stepped closer and saw that it wasn't Doctor White. It was a man, and he had a security patch on the sleeve of his shirt. A gash on his forehead might have been a bite. Kelly couldn't be sure.

“You okay over there?” Kelly shouted, but the alarm was too loud. Even so, the man looked up. He reached out before collapsing.

Smoke rolled along the ceiling like an inverted river. It smothered the fluorescent lights, casting a gray pall through the hallway. Gagging, Kelly dropped to his hands and knees and turned back to the door. If White had returned here after getting herself dressed, she might be unconscious inside.

You shouldn't have left her alone!

“Too late for second-guessing,” he muttered. He crooked his arm around his mouth and took a deep breath, then stood up and kicked at the door. But all he managed to do was knock himself into the middle of the hallway on his ass. He scrambled back to his feet with a quick glance back at the injured man, then returned to the door.

The first explosion was barely large enough to shake the floor and register in his mind.

The second was much more powerful. It took out the power, plunging him into near total darkness. The alarms went silent, though the ringing in his ears remained. To the left, he could barely make out the faint red glow of the exit sign over the stairwell. Another red light to the right hovered over the portable fire extinguisher.

Leave!
his mind screamed.
Get out!

But he couldn't leave White behind. She had the cure. She would save him and Kyle from this thing inside their bodies. She could save the world from the infection inside of it.

He crawled over and smashed the glass and pulled the extinguisher out, slicing open the back of his hand on a shard. He carried the tank back to the office and began to pound at the door handle with the base. With a splintering crunch, it snapped off and the newly repaired frame crumbled once again.

“Doctor White!”

This time the office was empty.

Wasting time! Get out!

The building shook again. He heard the rumble of walls crumbling somewhere. A ceiling light fixture fell and hit his back, the bulbs exploding. He pushed it away and hurried for the stairwell.

The standing water was now at least an inch deep and rising. He could hear it cascading down the steps. He didn't know where the fire was or even if it had been doused; all he knew was that the closest emergency exit was two stories down, an alarmed door in the basement that opened up into the parking garage.

A firefighter in full gear thundered past him, knocking him against the wall. “Keep going,” the man said, his voice muffled by his mask. “Get the hell out of the building! They're going to bomb it.” Then he was gone.

There was no escape from the smoke in the stairwell. It rose in thick coils from below, choking and blinding him. He found the handrail and stumbled down with his eyes squeezed shut, tears streaming down his cheeks.

He reached the half-landing and stopped to catch his breath. Someone down below was crying, calling for their mama.

“Hello?” he shouted. “Where are you?”

They didn't answer.

“I'm coming! Stay where you are.”

He tried to wipe some of the sprinkler water from his eyes, but the smoke was still too thick and burned them. He squeezed them shut again and proceeded to crawl down the steps toward where he hoped the child was waiting.

The crying abruptly stopped.

“Hello? Don't be scared. I'll help you get out. Where are you?”

There was no answer.

He was now on the first floor. The door to the hallway was shut. He placed a hand against it and found it hot to the touch. Blinking his eyes open for a moment, he saw the red flicker of flames through the small window. Thick black smoke billowed in from the narrow cracks between the door and the frame.

“Are you down there?” he called, inching his way toward the next flight down. He thought he heard movement, but he couldn't be sure. There was too much background noise, and the acoustics distorted everything. “Hello?”

Mama?
a tiny voice cried.

“I'm coming, honey. Just hold tight! Stay down near the ground and breathe through your shirt if you can.”

Mama?

“Don't try to talk.”

He stumbled down the steps in the eerie gloom, glad to find the smoke beginning to clear. It was easier to breathe.

He came around the landing and spied a pair of large rubber boots on the steps below. They were the same boots the fireman had worn, and they were attached to a pair of yellow fire-resistant pants.

Mama?

“Hello?” He paused. “Can you hear me?”

The feet thumped down a step, drawing further out of view. He followed them.

Mama?

The child's doll was lying on the fourth step down. It was on its back and blinking its pale blue eyes at the ceiling. “Mama?” it said.

It was covered in blood.

Two more steps down and the fireman's face came into view. His neck was bent at an odd angle. His helmet had been pulled away from his face — a face he no longer possessed — and a dead girl sat by his side. His hand still gripped the handle of the pickaxe now embedded deep in her chest.

She looked up from her chewing and regarded Kelly with her solemn black eyes. When she swallowed, the meat bulged down her throat. She bent down again and took another bite, crunching through the firefighter's bony sinuses as she worked her way to the fatty prize inside. She groaned as if in ecstasy.

She didn't even look up when Kelly wrenched the axe from her body. With a sob, he swung it down, aiming for the tender, unblemished skin where her hair parted over her neck. Her head separated cleanly from her shoulders, yet remained embedded inside the fireman's face. The rest of her slipped down the stairs to the basement landing.

Above him, the doll cried out for its mama.

But Kelly didn't hear it. He barely made it into the parking garage before throwing up onto the hood of some doctor's fancy car.

 

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right now?”

Jessie's mind was going a mile a minute, calculating the odds that the man would be able to make good on his threat before she was back inside the church. On the other hand, if he really wanted her dead, why hadn't he done it already?