S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (33 page)

“You can't find him! The police can't even find him! Only Arc can, and they don't even care.”

A tiny whimper escaped from her throat. She put a hand up to her mouth and looked away. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled. I know it's not your fault. Reggie always looked up to you kids, you and Kelly. It was that other girl, the one he fawned over, that I never liked. She treated Reggie like furniture.”

Jessie kept her mouth shut. She was sure Reggie had told his parents about what had happened to Ashley on the island. The girl may have had her faults, and maybe she did try a little too hard to come off as one of those bad girls, but deep down inside, she was—

Soft as marshmallow.

That's how Micah had described her. Ashley had always presented a hard shell to the world, but inside she was as vulnerable as any of them.

“She didn't deserve him,” Missus Casey added.

Jessie bit her tongue. It was hard for her to hear anyone speak ill of her friend.

“I know he wouldn't hurt anyone. He has a big heart,” Jessie told her.

Missus Casey stood at the counter with her back to Jessie. She busied herself rearranging the objects there. “They sent a team down to search the creek,” she said. “Bob said they sent divers into Frye Lake.”

Jessie frowned. “I doubt he'd go that far.”

But Missus Casey was beyond listening to anything Jessie had to say. She lifted her hand to her cheek and Jessie could see she was shaking. She raised the other and placed it to her face and stood there for a long time. She was crying, silently, her shoulders twitching. Jessie tried to reach out to her, but the woman pulled away.

“I think you should go.”

Jessie's Link pinged. She silenced it. “I want to help.”

“Please,” Missus Casey said. She pointed to the door. “Just leave me alone.”

“I'm not going until you tell me what he said.”

She took a long, juddering breath. “I don't know why he would say such a terrible thing,” she finally whispered.

Jessie waited.

Missus Casey turned and looked at her, her eyes red and her cheeks streaked with tears. “He asked for you.”

Me? What's so bad about that?

“I don't understand. Why is that—?”

“No! That wasn't all.” Missus Casey shook her head, then shoved her fist into her mouth, as if to stop herself from saying anything more.

Jessie's Link pinged again, a text this time:

<< WHERE ARE YOU? MEET ME AT MICAH'S ASAP. >>

She frowned at the message, then thumbed the connect button and waited for him to answer. “Kelly? Did you find him?”

Missus Casey looked over, new hope on her tear-streaked face.

“No. And you'd better get over here.”

“Why?”

“Just get over here.”

Jessie disconnected.

“What is it?” Missus Casey asked.

Jessie shook her head. “I have to go.” She asked one last time what Reggie had said when he first woke in the hospital room.

Missus Casey's face hardened. Her eyes grew dark. And when she spoke, her voice was without inflection. “He said, ‘Kill the bitch.' He kept saying it, over and over again, and he was fighting with Bob until the nurse finally had to come in and give him a shot to quiet him down.”

‡ ‡ ‡

Sunday night arrived and darkness came, entrenching itself so thoroughly into the fabric of the world that it was as if light itself had been banished. Jessie was alone in the living room. The boys were upstairs. She could hear their soft snores, Kelly in her bed, Eric in his own.

She had tried to sleep, but had given up a little past midnight and drifted down the stairs, feeling like an intruder in her own house. She sat on the couch and stared out the window at the silvery, silent, forsaken world. Nothing moved. No cars passed on the street.

Usually, there would be a light on somewhere, the windows of a house or two on every street blazing, even at this late hour. So many people had shifted their routines to take advantage of the relative coolness of the night. Two decades of rising temperatures, and humans were becoming night owls.

But not this night. Tonight, no one wanted to draw attention to themselves. It was as if they didn't trust that the alarm had been false.

A spokesperson for Arc had finally come on the local Media Stream late that afternoon and apologized for the disruption caused by the previous day's emergency outbreak alert. He blamed the incident on human error, on an overzealous state bureaucracy attempting to rein in Arc's success and popularity. When asked about the senseless murder of an innocent victim by patrol officers, the man deflected attention away from the tragedy by stating that law enforcement agencies were being badly mismanaged by state oversight boards. The announcement incensed both Eric and Kelly, although for differing reasons.

“The important thing to know,” the man added, “is that the incident will not affect our planned announcement of upgrades and advancements later this week. I know that was a concern for many of our customers.” He concluded by saying, “Once again, we appreciate the public's patience and patronage. Please save any questions for our mid-week media conference.”

As the night dragged on, clouds gathered and covered the moon. Darkness deepened. Moths began to dance around the glow of the street lamp. Every so often, a small dark shape would swoop out of the shadows and scatter the bugs, but they would always return. Mesmerized by the swarm's fluid movements, Jessie eventually drifted off to sleep.

Her dreams were soon visited by the hulking figure of a Player, not alive, not dead, stuck in some in-between state. In her dream, she gasped when she saw that it was Reggie. He spoke to her, told her he was going to kill her, going to ‘kill the bitch.' Except it wasn't his voice but Micah's that spewed from his lips. He began to chase her. And she ran, her legs like lead and the air thick as tar. She ran until the walls of her mind trapped her. And there, written in her own blood, were the same words Kelly had found that afternoon on the walls of Micah's cellar:

‡ ‡ ‡

The streetlamps were still lit when Jessie was shaken gently awake hours later. The moths were gone, and the approaching dawn painted the sky in crimson. “Go to school,” Eric told her, bending down.

She stared at him, confused and disbelieving. How could he possibly think she'd leave the house after all this?

“What time is it?”

“A little after six.” He was already dressed in his uniform.

“You're going in?” she asked, incredulous.

“Actually just getting back.” He didn't elaborate. “Listen, I'm dead on my feet. I'm going to get some rest. We'll talk later.”

“How can you expect me to go to school?” she protested, suddenly wide awake.

“You don't know who wrote those words, or when, or what they mean, Jess. For all we know, Micah could've written them there before he was conscripted. The blood wasn't fresh.”

“They were the exact same words Reggie said when he woke up.”

“And isn't it possible he saw them when he was there the other night? He probably just didn't remember seeing them.”

Jessie didn't answer.

“You know he'd never hurt you.”

Yeah, but Micah would.

“Besides, you'll be safe at school among other people.”

“I'll be safer at home.”

Eric exhaled noisily. “I don't have the energy to argue with you right now. Please, Jessie, just go to school.” He yawned widely, smacking his lips. “Let me worry about how we're going to get Grandpa's Link back.”

Frustration washed over her. This was just so typical of Eric:
Act normal. Don't rock the boat. Pretend everything's alright. Be a fucking coward
.

Jessie pushed herself off the couch, knocking him away.

“Jess? Come on, don't be like that!”

She stomped up the stairs, aware that she was acting childishly, but that was the effect her brother had on her.

She slammed open her closet door. Kelly grumbled from the bed, his arm over his eyes blocking the light. She threw on the first shirt she pulled out, not bothering to see what it was.

“What are you doing?”

“Ask the warden.”

“Who?”

“My asshole brother.”

She looked down at the mess of her outfit, then up to the mirror over her dresser at the mess that was her hair. She looked terrible, but she didn't really care.

She retraced her steps from Saturday. Once more she visited the little glade and the secret spot past the fallen tree, and once more she realized how her mind had played her for a fool, how it had tricked her into seeing what she most—

wanted

—feared seeing: evidence that her mother had been brought to this place. But the trash told the same story. Just as the shoe Kelly had found hadn't been her mother's. She was looking for answers to the wrong questions in the wrong places.

Her Link pinged. She almost didn't bother answering.

“Where are you?” Kelly asked. “How come you didn't wait for me?”

She could see the familiar front gate of the school over his shoulder. He must have left shortly after she did and hurried to catch up. She shrugged. “Eric pissed me off. I just needed a little alone time.”

“You okay?”

No.

“Yeah.” She sighed. “You don't have to wait. I'm almost there anyway. Go on to class.”

“Wait for me after school. We'll figure this out.”

Yeah, right.

Her shoes were soaking wet by the time she arrived ten minutes later. The water squished between her toes and the worn soles squeaked as she made her way to her homeroom. With each step, she thought:
This is wrong. This is so god damn wrong. I shouldn't be here.

She wanted to be anywhere else but here. She needed to be out looking for Reggie. She needed to be figuring out how to unlock her Link. This was the last place she needed to be.

The halls were abuzz with talk of Saturday's alarm. Conspiracy theories abounded, the ideas swarming around her head like barn swallows— everything from Arc intentionally setting off the warning system in order to antagonize the government, to the government doing it to Arc for the same reason.

Someone mentioned that there had been a break in the containment of the situation in southern Manhattan, and Jessie remembered what she'd overheard that day she went down there, that the condition had deteriorated.

Nobody mentioned the car accident in New York, just a few miles away, or the people who had died there. Nobody seemed to make the connection.

She took a smug satisfaction at knowing how wrong most of the speculation was, yet was disturbed by the amusement it seemed to stir up.

It made her sick.

She didn't want to be here.

A voice rose above the others in the crowd: “Well, well. If it isn't Zombitch.”

Jessie's skin crawled with recognition. She rolled her eyes as Siennah stepped into her path. “What do you want?”

The girl replied with a crafty smile. “Figured you'd be the first to rub it in.”

“Rub what in?”

“Sad, really. I lost a dear friend this weekend.”

Jessie's eyes narrowed. Was she mocking her about Reggie?

“Yeah, my Player died. It was time to dump him, though. You know, ‘cause it was getting a bit used up.” She smirked. “I'm still in mourning, though.”

Jessie relaxed slightly, though she was still uncertain where this was going. “And I care about this
how
?”

“Well, maybe you don't care now, but—” Another sly smile, a twinkle in her artificially blue eyes. “You will, once you see who my new Player is.”

Jessie blinked numbly. “Whatever,” was all she could manage. She forced herself to turn and walk away, but her mind was screaming,
Reggie!

“I understand I'm not the only one who lost someone close to them recently.”

Jessie stopped, her hackles raised. What was Siennah playing at? She turned back.

“Someone who cared a lot for you, maybe?” The grin turned into a mocking laugh.

Jessie stepped over until mere inches separated them. Siennah, who was shorter by several inches, raised her eyes patronizingly at Jessie's lips. She refused to look her in the eye.

“The good thing about those close to us?” Siennah continued. “They
always
come back in the end, don't they?” She snickered. “I suppose you would know about that better than anyone else, wouldn't you,
zombie girl
.”

Jessie stood for a moment without speaking, stunned by what Siennah was saying.
She's talking about Reggie!

“If you know something, Siennah—”

“Of course I know something!” she snapped. “Did you forget who I am, who my father is? I know a lot of somethings.”