S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (28 page)

The windows were brightly lit, but from where he was standing out on the driveway, he could only see the top half of the living room wall and the ceiling. A feeling of homesickness overtook him.

You don't belong here.

The end of summer was still weeks away and a gentle evening breeze was blowing. Though far from chilly, it was the mildest he'd felt in months. The fall-like wind lifted the hair from his forehead and bent it toward the back, and anyone seeing him in that moment might've been struck by the utter despair in his eyes, despair and desolation. Everything he'd worked for all these years had, in a matter of weeks, simply vanished.

Not vanished. Been thrown away.

He had to make everything right. Earning back Jessie's love and Eric's trust was going to be hard.

Forgiving himself was another story altogether.

His shoulders sagging, he turned around and began to walk away.

‡ ‡ ‡

Jessie had been sitting quietly in the gathering darkness of the living room when Eric walked in lugging the heavy holo projector in his arms. She saw him throw a furtive glance toward the television, trying not to be obvious. But she hadn't been watching
Survivalist
. In fact, it'd been a couple days since she had. He just hadn't been around enough to notice.

“Where's Kelly?” she asked.

“Walking home.” His face was stoic, but Jessie could tell he was angry and she knew immediately that they'd had some kind of confrontation.

He brought the machine in and set it on the floor in the corner of the room with a grunt.

“Eric, what'd you say to him?”

“It's not what I said to him, it's what he told me.”

“It's not his fault.”

“Really? Because it actually sounds like it is.”

“He'll fix it. He's already been trying.”

Eric simply frowned at her and shook his head. “I hope you're right.” And he walked back out the door to bring in the remaining gear.

When he was finished, he checked his Link and excused himself, claiming he was exhausted. Jessie knew he wasn't tired. It was just an excuse to avoid Kelly.

His bedroom door clicked quietly shut. A few minutes later, she heard the creak of his bed, and she pictured him sitting there, his work shirt hanging on the hook on the back of the door, shoes kicked into a corner, his face drawn and haggard, looking older than his twenty-eight years. She could see him staring blankly at the wall and wondering how things could have gotten so out of control.

He worked so hard to take care of her. She wondered why he even bothered sometimes.

She was feeling deeply guilty about the way she'd treated them. In particular, she cursed herself for doubting Kelly. How could she have so easily let her love for him sour? Was she really that shallow, that capricious? Hadn't they just promised each other to be faithful?

But as she sat waiting for her husband to return, she tried only to focus on the good they had shared. God, how she loved him. She would do whatever it took to fix things.

The waiting made her restless, so she got up and paced. When a half hour passed, she grew worried. When thirty more minutes slipped away, she despaired. She retreated to her bedroom and crawled into bed without getting undressed.

He finally came in shortly after eleven. She heard the jangle of his keys, the soft squeak of his sneakers on the floor below, and she sat up, sighing with relief.

The faucet in the kitchen turned on for a moment, shut off. The downstairs toilet flushed.

She couldn't decide whether to stand or sit. Finally, she lay down facing the door.

She heard him come up the stairs. She heard the soft rustle of his feet on the carpet outside in the hallway. The door slid open and there was his silhouette. He stood motionless, as if waiting for an invitation. Jessie shifted over to let him know she was awake, and he stepped in. He came and sat down next to her and the bed sank and the gravity of their bodies pulled them together. She took his hand and held it up to her face and used his fingers to wipe away her tears.

“I am so sorry, Jessie,” he whispered. “I totally screwed everything up.”

“
Shh
,” she told him. She raised her hand and brushed her fingers through his hair. “Lie down.”

He did, pressing himself against her body.

Her hand traveled the length of his arm, slipped to his thigh, then over to his stomach. “Tomorrow,” she whispered, and she felt him nod in understanding. Tomorrow there would be a reckoning of wrongs, a sharing of secrets, a time for confessions. But not tonight. Tonight was about them, about fixing the broken connection between them.

She swept her hand to his side and she heard him suck in a sharp breath as it passed over the bandage. “Still hurts?” she asked, and once again he nodded. “Well, maybe I can make you forget about it for a while.”

“Yes,” he said, turning to face her. He buried his nose in her shoulder and inhaled the scent of her skin. “I'd like that.”

† † †

She was sound asleep when her Link pinged the next morning. She knew it was morning because when she cracked an eyelid, the light streaming in the window was so bright that she had to block it with her hand.

After the second ping, Kelly shifted beside her. “You going to answer that?” he mumbled, smacking his lips sleepily.

She extended a hand from beneath the covers, enjoying the feel of his skin on her naked thigh, then groaned as a thought came to her:
What if it's Citizen Registration?

It won't be them
, she reminded herself.
Today's Saturday and they're not open.

What if they are? They said they're pushing hard to meet the compliance deadline.

The pinging stopped.

“Must not have been important,” Kelly mumbled, still half asleep.

Jessie rolled back over and threw a leg over him with a smile. The awake half of her mind was trying hard to rouse the still-sleeping half. Worries over her implant were already fading away.

“I'm sorry, Jessie,” he murmured. “About everything.”

She frowned.
Not now
, she wanted to tell him.
Just a few more minutes. Can't we just pretend none of it happened for a few more minutes?

He turned over, displacing her hand on his hip, and repeated the words. “I should have told you sooner about Doctor White. And Kyle.”

Jessie sighed resignedly, but didn't answer. She didn't want him to go on, but the warm feelings she'd had upon waking up next to him had already fled. They might as well get it over with.

“If it wasn't for Doctor White,” he went on, “Kyle would've died a long time ago. He could still die.”

“She said you'd explain his part in all this, how he's connected to the cure.”

Kelly nodded, took in a long breath and slowly let it out. He rolled over onto his back and crooked an arm over his forehead. “When Kyle was six months old, he was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. I can still see him, so tiny, his skin so pale all the time, although maybe that was after they started him on the chemo. It's all a jumble, and I can't remember it all exactly. After months of treatment, his immune system was shot. Though the cancer was gone, he desperately needed new marrow.”

“I thought it was some organ thing. His kidneys.”

“That's just the story we told people.”

“I don't understand. Why would you lie about something like this?” She pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Why not just tell the truth?”

“Because they would've taken him away.” He sat up, wincing. The tape on the bandage was pulling. “The hospital identified a suitable donor in the registry. They were able to get a hold of the guy, but he was on some business trip to the west coast. My parents requested the next best match from the registry, but I guess this guy decided to catch the red-eye out of Sea-Tac Airport. He pinged en route and said he'd be landing at Logan around six
AM
and could be down here by nine at the latest. He really wanted to help.”

Jessie waited.

“I remember being in Kyle's room at the hospital with my parents. He was really weak by then, terribly skinny, IVs dripping medicine into his frail body, tubes slipping nourishment down his throat. Morning came and we were on pins and needles for the ping to come through, praying it would be soon and wondering if maybe it would've been better to go with the next best match.

“All of a sudden these two nurses came rushing into the room and they pulled Kyle out. The donor had arrived. He'd come straight from the airport in a limo and was being prepped. The doctors processed the marrow and transferred it into Kyle within a half hour. By the afternoon, he was back in recovery and the doctors were saying the next few weeks would be crucial. Nobody knew if the graft would take.”

“So, what happened?”

“What happened was everything went to hell. The donor was infected.”

With what?
Jessie was about to ask, but then she knew and the shock hit her like ice water. “Oh my god!” she exclaimed, sitting up. “The Seattle outbreak! The donor, he was there when it started!”

Kelly nodded.

“B-but wouldn't they have known he was bitten? Wouldn't
he
have?”

“That's the thing: he wasn't bitten. Not by a Reanimate anyway. And remember, they never did figure out exactly how the outbreak there started, but Doctor White always suspected it was mosquitoes.”

Jessie stared at the wall for a moment, remembering. Eric had taken her to Washington that very same summer. The mosquitoes had been horrible. She remembered the bites covering her body, the terrible itching. Eric, too. Was it possible that some of them could've transmitted the disease?

“During the procedure,” Kelly continued, “the donor mentioned he was achy. He'd been running a low-grade fever since arriving off the plane. It was barely above normal, actually, and the doctors had passed it off as fatigue. A few hours after the transfer, while they were both in recovery, the guy went into cardiac arrest. We were all in the same room, just on the other side of a curtain. Kyle was in the next bed over. I remember they pushed us all out into the hallway to make room for the crash team. Mom didn't want me to be scared so she took me down to the cafeteria while Dad stayed with Kyle.”

He paused, and Jessie could see he was having difficulty continuing.

“My father saw it all unfold. Of course, he didn't realize what was happening at first. For all he knew, the donor's heart had restarted and for some unknown reason, he was attacking everyone. He killed the entire crash team, as well as two security guards, before Dad figured it out. He managed to wedge an empty gurney against the door. By then, the first victims were starting to reanimate.”

“I never heard anything about it.”

“Nobody did. Arc suppressed it, paid off the families of the victims, falsified reports. The NCD officers were all bought and paid for at the time. My parents knew the truth, of course, but they kept mum. Arc must've threatened them. I only found out the barest details right before we went to Long Island. Doctor White pinged me out of the blue and told me to meet her. I didn't believe what she had to say, but Mom and Dad confirmed everything.”

“Doctor White,” Jessie spat quietly. “I don't trust that woman.”

“She saved Kyle's life. If she hadn't known about Halliwell and been at Sisters of Mercy when it happened . . . .”

He shrugged. “That night, after we returned from the island, when Doctor White asked about whether I'd sent you the picture, I got really angry at her. I didn't understand what it was all about. That's when she told me about the file on your Link. And how you'd left it behind.”

Jessie scowled at him. “And she told you to go back and get it?”

“No. She warned me not to.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because I knew you would, if no one else did. I honestly didn't care at all about some stupid file. I would've been more than happy to let her deal with the mess herself. If it was only about the file.” He sighed. “But it wasn't.”

“Jake.”

Kelly nodded. “I knew the moment we got back. I could see it in your eyes. You'd already made up your mind and nothing was going to stop you. There was no way I was going to let that happen, so I went back myself. But when I got there, I couldn't find him. Thankfully the IUs were gone, so I could search.”

He chuffed at the memory. “I was ready to kill him, that's how pissed off I was.”

“At me?”

“At Doctor White.” He sighed. “I found your Link near the gas station, then promised myself I'd leave if I couldn't find Jake before the tide shifted. Shortly after I did, we crossed paths with those two jokers from the Coalition, Shane and Casey.”

“So, the whole marriage proposal thing was just—”

“No, Jess. That was real. I meant it, you know that.”

She wanted so badly to believe him, but there was still so much she didn't know, so much that he and the doctor hadn't explained. “If you'd told me sooner, I wouldn't have embarrassed myself accusing White of having an affair with you.”

Kelly stared at her, blinking in surprise. “An affair? You thought I was having an affair? With
her
? Oh my god, Jess! She's so old!”

“But pretty.”

“I don't know. Maybe. You think so?”

“Shut up.” She punched his arm.

He cracked a smile. “You know I would never cheat on you. How could I ever think about anyone else?” He leaned over to give her a kiss. Before he could pull away, she reached around his neck and held him close, prolonging the embrace. She could feel her want, her need for him, stirring inside of her. And then his hands were on her and hers were on him, and they were everywhere, pulling and pushing. She arched her neck as he kissed her throat and moaned.