S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (84 page)

Except it wasn't mud. With a gasp, she realized it was the abdomen of another biker.

 

The bushes parted behind Lyssa and a shadow fell over her.

She couldn't move. She was in too much shock.

She stared at the body, unable to breathe. Unable, even, to blink. How could anything have ripped someone open like this? How could there be so much blood and gore? It was everywhere. It was even as high as the tops of the reeds.

She saw the ropy intestines trailing from the gaping wound and for a split second she imagined that it was her lying there and Remy eating his way out of her belly. A flap of liver lay over one side of the opening, the stomach on the opposite side, disconnected from the body at both ends, yet still attached by viscera. The kidneys were gone.

She heard another clumsy footfall behind her. She felt the air shift, felt it brush the hair on the back of her neck.

She closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable attack.

“Lyssa,” Ramon hissed, “we need to go.
Now!
”

A hand wrapped around her arm and tugged.

“Lyssa, we— Holy shit!”

Her stomach was empty. And even then her body managed to expel from it a thin green liquid. It jetted past her lips and onto the corpse.

Ramon didn't wait for her to finish. “Jesus Christ. Come on!” He pulled her again, this time with brutal urgency.

With her unbloodied hand she grabbed Ramon and pulled herself to her feet. Beyond his shoulder, the trail was clear. “What happened to the other one?”

“Dead. You broke his neck.”

She stopped, confused.
I broke—?

She pushed past him and stared down at the body. The helmet was still attached, the chinstrap still intact. “But—”

How could I break someone's neck?

“He's dead,” Ramon assured her. “Come on.”

How could—

“I killed him.”

“Lyssa, listen to me. Whatever attacked these people is still out there. We need to get in the car.
Now
.”

She turned to him, frowning. “Out there? No.” He still refused to see what was right in front of his eyes. The bikers had attacked each other. They'd been passing the tower and—

CRACK!

Her vision went white for a moment. She staggered back from the blow, raising a hand to her cheek.

“
Now
, Lyssa.” He dragged her out of the bushes and to the car. Her feet felt unwilling. He climbed in, then pulled her in after. “Close the— Damn it, Lyssa! Snap out of it and close the door.”

She did as he asked.

He hit me. Ramon hit me.

She couldn't believe he'd done that. He'd never laid a hand on her before, not in anger or fright.

He put the car into gear and began to drive.

Behind her, Cassie was sobbing. Shinji was whining.

They passed the clearing with the van in it. It was covered in blood. The passenger door was open, and the blood was there, too.

They saw no bodies.

And that seemed to be the most terrifying thing of all.

* * *

Please don't fight.

At first they didn't hear the quiet plea.

Mama—

“I told you we should've stopped.”

“No, you didn't,” Ramon snapped at her.

“Well, I thought it!”

“And what am I supposed to do, read your mind?”

“Yes! I mean, no. I said the radiator was leaking. You heard me! When we stopped for the bike. And then I said we should see if we could use the van.”

“We had to get out of there!”

Daddy, please. Mama
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
.

Ramon gripped the steering wheel hard. The bandage was filthy and coming loose. He kept glancing down at the warning light on the dash, as if it was just a joke and it would turn off. There was no smoke or steam yet coming from beneath the hood. Not yet.

“One of us can walk back up the path and—”

“No, Lyssa. It's at least a mile up, and even if we manage to get there safely, there may not be any keys.”

“So we just sit here?”

“For now. We'll wait for the engine to cool, then add some water.”

“And where are we going to get water out here?”

“I packed a couple bottles in the trunk with the box of food. I'll go get it.” But he didn't move.

Lyssa stared at him, hoping to discern if he was succumbing yet to the Stream. How would it happen? Would it be sudden? Would he just snap and attack them? Not knowing terrified her. But worse than that was wondering if she was being affected by it, too. What if she were the one to snap?

She turned around to look at Cassie. There was fright in the girl's pale face. She hugged Shinji tight to her, as if the dog would protect her, and wouldn't look anywhere but at the back of Ramon's seat.
Does she sense the risk, too?

“Honey,” she asked, “are you okay?”

Oh god, what if Cassie loses control?

Lyssa shuddered at the thought, at what she'd be forced to do if that were to happen.

“Please don't fight, Mama.”

Lyssa tried to smile, but it felt awkward on her face, more like a grimace. “Okay, honey.” She put her clean hand on Ramon's arm. He hesitated a moment, then turned and nodded at Cassie. His wink of reassurance looked much more convincing.

They waited. Lyssa rested her hand on her lap. Moving it reminded her of the blood coating it. It itched and pinched her skin. As a scientist and physician, she knew the risks inherent in blood exposure— hepatitis, HIV, meningitis. In all likelihood, the biker wasn't a carrier of anything like that. Most athletic people weren't.

And you can't catch crazy.

But the bloodied hand still felt like a separate part of her, that it would suddenly turn on her.

An hour passed. Cassie and Shinji were getting restless. Ramon finally managed to get his door open. He tried to add water to the radiator, but the hood refused to open. “The engine should be cooled off enough by now,” he told them as he slipped back into the car. Lyssa could see the doubt on his face. He knew they weren't going to get very far.

Finally, exhaling in exasperation, Ramon started the engine, shifted, then began to back up the trail. The engine light immediately came back on and a warning chimed.

The van was their only hope. But if they couldn't get it started, then they were going to be in serious trouble.

 

Today, the president addressed governors' concerns about the highly controversial and secretive Omegaman Division operated by the United States Marine Corps, although he once again denied their requests for access to information. In his rebuttal, the president cited the threat to our nation's security strategy that would be created if the reins on technology central to it were to be loosened. He further noted that a release of information could erode the advantage currently enjoyed by the nation's military forces, and may jeopardize any future applications currently being developed or under consideration.

In arguing their case, the governors, who are calling themselves the Southern States Coalition, claim that the Omegaman program should no longer enjoy protections under the Defense Weaponry Secrets Act as the technology has now been adopted for civil purposes, specifically the expansion of Stream and its replacing the Internet and cellular networks.

‘
The transition to Stream,' the president defended, ‘is vital for the continued survival of the Omegaman program. This alone confers special status under the DWS Act. Expansion of the base technology into civilian markets represents a forward-thinking evolution of our defense infrastructure. As to its administration, it is imperative that the technologies remain fully within the hands of the scientists and engineers who created them. Why? Because they understand them best, are keenly aware of their limitations and advantages, and are fully cognizant of the importance of safekeeping their secrets. I ask the American people for patience as we continue to evaluate the potential uses of these technologies in our lives, but I must also remind the public that our understanding of its potential is still very much in its infancy. We want to avoid problems which might arise if their implementation is not properly overseen.'

Stream, which is intended to replace our current cellular and data transfer systems, claims to have several advantages over the existing Internet and mobile phone infrastructure, including greater security and control of linear data feed transmission, especially over hardware responsible for processing complex cybernetic data upon which the Omegaman technology relies.

According to senior software architect Gustav Lim, who developed the first quaternary Application Programming Interface while an intern at the now-defunct search giant, Google, the new methods are several generations ahead of anything else ever conceived or developed. ‘Stream utilizes a dynamic interlacing codex for encryption, processing, and storage of data. It is completely unbreakable without the decryption key. Any release of the key raises the risk of breach.'

Lim's new interface enabled the Ames Research Consortium, or ARC International, to build what is being touted as ‘an extremely efficient and totally secure data transmission protocol.'

Stated Padraig Harrison, a founder and senior strategist at ARC, ‘We are moving as aggressively as we can to develop beneficial applications for everyday use within the civilian sector. We want the public to know that we pledge to serve the people. For example, in addition to building a wholly new communication network, we are ready to formalize what had been an experimental behavioral normalization program, which we initiated a couple years ago with the launch of our LINC neural implant pilot program. We expect these to also be fully integrated with Stream once the system is expanded nationwide. We plan to mainstream neural implantation within the year and to avail the devices to every single individual for free under a proposed government subsidization bill currently making its way through Congress.'

As for the persistent rumors that the neural-implanted Omegamen, initially used by the United States Marine Corps, are reanimated corpses, Harrison dismissed the idea out of hand. ‘Speculation is an inevitable, if illegitimate, offspring of secrecy. It's human nature to wonder, to try and figure things out. We're puzzle-solvers. Unfortunately, it is also human nature to popularize the most unrealistic ideas. At Ames, we have always been as open and forthright in our descriptions of the Omegamen as possible, while withholding only those details which might compromise national security if they were to be made public. It is true that the individuals employed as Omegamen have been medically altered, but only with a drug. The effects are fully reversible. The drug tempers the very same base impulses which drove these individuals to do the criminal acts which qualified them for the program in the first place. The neural implants, which are the activated versions of the latent devices which we have been safely inserting into normal, healthy individuals for the past two to three years, enable us to modulate the behavior of these participants in ways beneficial to society. They are not, as some people like to claim, zombies. To say anything of the kind would not only be dismissive of the good work we are enabling them to do, but it denigrates the hard work of all the engineers behind the scenes at iTech.'

Regarding the behavioral normalization program you mentioned earlier, would you mind addressing the potential for abuse?

‘
As I alluded, implants inserted into willing volunteers are kept in a state of latency, or quiescence. There are both hardware and software safeguards in place to ensure that no one ever improperly gains access to them. These controls were mandated by the federal government and iTech has met or exceeded every metric for compliance.'

When asked if the problems currently being reported on Long Island are related to the Stream rollout, both the Ames Research Consortium and the president were emphatic that they weren't. Said the president, ‘Our medical investigators are looking into any possible links with the animal outbreak, though mounting evidence suggests the two events are of a completely different nature. However, given our uncertainty and the fluidity of the circumstances there, we have chosen to restrict travel to and from the island as a precautionary measure. This is to minimize any risk of inadvertent spread if it turns out we are not dealing with some sort of mass hysteria event, which is what we now believe to be the case.

Thank you. This is Katherine Hardesty, reporting live for FOX News from the White House.

 

They found the keys in the van's ignition, but the battery was dead.

Ramon spent the next forty minutes struggling to get the hood of the Audi open so he could jumpstart the van. Lyssa climbed onto the van's roof to warn him in case anyone or anything was in the thick brush surrounding the clearing.

Cassie remained in the car with Shinji. She refused to eat or drink anything and complained of being bored. She wanted to get out, but Lyssa made her promise to stay inside. “It's too dangerous out there.” She left the girl with a package of cookies and some bruised bananas. When she checked later, all but the peels and wrappers had been eaten.

She held onto the van's transmission antenna, unworried since there was no power to transmit the Stream poison. She turned in a steady circle and scanned the clearing's perimeter. Besides the bike trail, there was a gravel road, whose view the van had blocked from the trail.

Her arms itched terribly from the scrapes she'd obtained that morning beneath the bridge. She tried not to scratch them. She didn't like the way the blood flaked off her skin, and yet when Ramon had offered to wash it off with their last bottle of water, she'd refused. “Save it for Cassie to drink.”