S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (86 page)

“Move the car!” Ramon shouted. “Move the goddamn car!”

“Get out of the way!” the officers shouted back.

The back doors of the van were pulled open. The light was blinding. Cassie screamed and tried to scramble away.

“Help . . . me,” the soldier panted. He tried to climb in, his rifle still in his hand. “Please, help—” A bubble of blood formed on his lips and burst.

But then he was gone, jerked suddenly away. Lyssa heard his body hit the pavement with a sickening splat. He let out a bloodcurdling scream, which stopped when Ramon backed over him.

“
Ramon!”

Another soldier appeared, but he, too, was pulled away. He waved his arms to keep his balance. And then his head exploded as a bullet tore through his skull. He dropped, leaving only the robed man to fill the opening.

He stood there for a moment. He almost seemed to smile, and Lyssa had this crazy idea that he was going to start dancing.

But he didn't. He lunged.

Cassie screamed. They were all screaming. And yet Lyssa was aware of other sounds around her, boots hitting the pavement, cries of pain, bodies slamming against the sides of the van. And gunfire. A hole appeared next to her head, piercing the darkness. Then another. They looked like stars.

“Go!” Lyssa yelled. “Get out of here! Why aren't we going?”

She kicked out at the horrible bloody statue.

Don't get bit.

The soldier's warning repeated inside her head.
Don't get bit don't get bit don't—

She kicked again, but her foot hit nothing. There was too little room inside the van for leverage. And Cassie was still scrambling on top of her. Lyssa could barely move. She could barely see.

A bloody hand slapped the floor, a hollow, wet sound like a slab of meat flung onto a butcher's block. Then a second hand. Now the dancing statue leaned in and began to claw his way inside.

Grab yer pardner, doh-see-doh!

Bite them, chomp them, to and fro!

Lyssa's foot connected with the side of his head, but it didn't seem to faze him at all.

Behind him rose a second figure. It was the first soldier who'd tried to get in, the one Ramon had run over. Half his chest was collapsed, his lungs oozing out of a hole beneath his arm.

He's alive! Oh god. How can he still be alive?

He was still holding the rifle.

“Shoot him!” Lyssa screamed, pointing to the costumed man. She knew how insane that was. She knew the soldier wouldn't.

What was his name, the costumed man? What the fuck was his—

Adrian! It was Adrian!

“Listen to me, Adrian. Please, you don't want to—”

But Adrian wasn't listening. He reached in and his fingers raked Lyssa's ankle.

Now link arms and one-two-three!

Bite yer partner, make ‘em bleed!

“God damn it! Shoot him!”

But the soldier ignored her words. They were all ignoring what she was trying to tell them! They opened their mouths at once and began to moan.

And when they shut their mouths, they made chewing motions with their jaws.

Oh god, they want to eat me!

“Mama!
Mama!”

The engine roared and the tires spun, sending a spiral of smoke out behind them. Both men fell heavily to the pavement as Ramon peeled away. They immediately rose again.

Lyssa watched in horror through the open back doors as the scene descended into complete chaos. A tank appeared from the side, the turret slowly pirouetting. A string of white streaked from the cannon and the storefront exploded in a ball of flames.

Soldiers and police officers alike were gunned down. Some rose out of their pools of blood, like the physical embodiments of their own murdered souls. The guns fired and fired and the bullets tore into their bodies. They didn't fall right away, not like they should.

Instead, they danced. They all danced.

Fleeing from that scene of horror, Lyssa saw the flagpole tip away from its base on the roof. She watched as it began to fall, the flag flapping madly in the wind. She watched as it speared the man in the costume, impaling him to a small planter of bright marigolds.

This time, he didn't rise. Liberty had danced his last.

 

It felt like weeks since he'd lain in his own bed, since he'd had a shower and shaved his face, since he'd eaten cereal from a bowl in his own kitchen. Weeks instead of just a few days.

He could hear Lyssa and Cassie speaking behind him in the back of the van, the soft murmur of their voices. What were they talking about? Him?

He wiped his forearm across his brow and felt the sweat there, dripping down, slippery and thin, oily. Nothing like blood. Nothing like what covered Lyssa. Why the hell didn't she wash it off?

There was no breeze tonight, nothing to mask the night sounds. Yet, incredibly, all was silent here in the alley where he'd found refuge. There were too many barriers, too much gunfire, for them to attempt to reach the house. At least there were no agonized groans of the afflicted. None outside, anyway. Just those in his own haunted mind.

He was still trying to wrap his head around what they'd seen fleeing from that terrible scene in Medford. How long had he careened through the neighborhoods like a madman, past sunlight dappled lawns and massive columned colonial mansions? They'd gotten lost.

But then he'd found this alley and taken refuge inside it.

Another car sped past the opening, a flash of lights in the now-dark alleyway, the burp of its siren. There and gone before he could even react. Did they think they could still maintain control?

He leaned forward to switch the radio on and scrolled through the stations, past all the speculation about viruses and hallucinations and quarantines. He stopped when he came to the one voice he'd stubbornly dismissed before. He'd never wanted to believe what the man said because it was too crazy, some of the shit he was spouting. But Medford had opened his eyes. What had happened at the bridge and on the bike path forced him to accept that he was the one in denial.

I've only got a few more minutes on this battery before I need to juice it up again, folks. I'll be off the air then for a while, moving to a new location. Until then, I'll be putting the truth out there about what's happening on Long Island. Those within range, I implore you to spread the word.

People, there is a disaster unfolding. They would tell you that it is being contained. They would tell you that the threat isn't human, or even organic. They tell you in one breath that it's strictly animal and in a second breath that it's psychological. They claim there's a new form of virus, but then argue they don't know a thing about it. Well, which the fuck is it?

Sorry. No one to bleep me anymore. It's just me, this mic and my portable transmitter.

Listen, people, there have been fatalities— dozens, if not hundreds by now. They're lying and saying there are few, if any.

But the worst lie is now they're telling residents they're free to evacuate, and that the military is there to help.

Lies, people. All lies.

“Turn it off, Ramon,” he heard Lyssa mutter.

She reached forward and turned the dial to static.

“Let's just hear what he has to say,” he told her, and flipped it back.

He knew she felt betrayed. By the man on the radio. By her own husband.

So, what is the truth? Folks, it is this:

The cause of the epidemic is vir—

She switched it off. “It's electromagnetic. They're reprogramming our brains.”

Ramon turned it on again.

—
new form of rabies? It's a cover story. Yes, this epidemic is responsible for what's happening right now. It's the
only
thing happening here right now. How else does one explain all the infectious disease officials and the CDC and the epidemiologists and strike teams here? They created it. And the other dirty little truth? They planned for this to happen.

It wasn't some poor schleps running a tiny mom-and-pop research operation.

Ramon glanced in the mirror at Lyssa. But she didn't even seem to have heard.

The virus was engineered three, four years ago as part of the Department of Defense's Omegaman contract. I have in my hands top secret documents showing how the man in charge, a man known as The Colonel, hid evidence of the program's many dangers from Congress.

“Did he say ‘The Colonel'?”

Lyssa didn't answer.

By the time the deception was uncovered, it was already too late. The government had a choice: dismantle a program which appeared to be extremely successful. Which had made many people very, very rich and powerful. Or hide the facts and pretend we were too stupid not to notice.

I guess we really are stupid.

So, what does the virus do?

First and foremost, it kills anyone infected with it. There is no preventative, no treatment, no cure. Period. End of story. Buh-bye.

Before I tell you what else it does, I need you all to understand something. None of this is new information. You've all heard me talk about this before. You've all heard me go on and on about how the Omegas
 
— the soldiers, and now the civilian work crews
 
— how there was something terribly wrong with them. And you've all thought me paranoid and crazy. The Ames Research Consortium, the people who built the Omega applications, have consistently denied my claims, of course. Over the past year, they've done nothing but try and discredit me and my employer. They tried to shut me up. They burned down my transmitter on Jayne's Hill.

But the fact of the matter is, this outbreak, it was supposed to happen. Maybe not the way it has. Maybe that's what accounted for all the confusion and the scrambling. But it was supposed to happen, folks, because it finally gives the government a way to absolve themselves of the lies they've been telling us all these years.

Ramon turned his head, but his neck was stiff from sitting for so long in the seat. It was dark outside the van. Too dark to see. And very quiet. He was glad for both.

People, this is only the beginning. This is our descent into madness, into the apocalypse. And unless we stop them, it will be a dark and sure path. At the end of it awaits our oblivion.

This virus which kills people with such extreme prejudice, which was created by madmen in a government-sponsored laboratory, this virus also—

The radio went silent.

“I said I don't want to listen to him anymore,” Lyssa said.

 

Ramon turned his face to the window, exhaling noisily. Nothing moved outside. All was dark.

When next he opened his eyes, daylight was beginning to lighten the sky. Lyssa was asleep in her seat. Cassie was snoring in the back.

He reached forward and switched on the radio. Lyssa stirred, but didn't wake.

He flipped through the stations and found that they were all transmitting the same message:

This is a broadcast of the emergency notification system. A mandatory evacuation of Long Island has been ordered. This includes the counties of Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk. All residents, whether permanent or seasonal, as well as visitors and day employees, must immediately make their way to any of the authorized egress points located along the western and northwestern traffic corridors. Carry identification. Prepare to be screened. This evacuation order will remain in effect until further notice. Violators will be taken into custody. Looters will be shot.

He didn't know what to make of it. If they were in the middle of a deadly outbreak, then wouldn't they want to quarantine them? Why would they allow travel out of a hot zone?

“They want us to get away from the towers,” Lyssa quietly told him.

“If that's true, then why don't they just shut them down?”

She didn't answer right away. “Maybe they can't.”

“Okay. We've got about a quarter tank of gas left. More than enough to get us off the island.”

“Assuming we even make it there.”

She climbed into the back to find something to eat. Ramon started the engine, then drove slowly toward the mouth of the alley. Nothing jumped out of the dark doorways at them. Nothing attacked. Everything seemed strangely quiet.

“They don't like the sun,” Cassie said.

“Who?”

“The hungry people. The sun hurts their eyes. It burns their skin.”

Crossing an empty intersection, they were nearly sideswiped by a large pickup truck. It barreled past doing at least eighty. Ramon wrenched the steering wheel to the right, throwing Lyssa and Cassie against the panel of computers bolted against the left side of the van. The tires hit the curb hard enough to elicit a sickening crunch.

“Shit. Last thing we need right now is a flat tire.” But there was no telltale thud of deflated rubber as they slowed.

The pickup fishtailed around the next corner, then disappeared.

The exodus had begun.

* * *

There were no barriers this time. No police cars and flashing lights. No tanks or trucks blocking access to the highway. Not a single soldier shouting or waving a rifle. It was like they'd all packed up and left during the night.

But the lawless were everywhere, crawled out of their holes. There weren't very many, but enough to make Ramon cautious about stopping. The lawbreakers were disregarding the warnings to leave, apparently unimpressed by the so-called emergency. Or perhaps the opportunity afforded by the absence of police was just too hard to pass up.

The Stemples saw isolated crowds looting stores along the way. They saw buildings and cars on fire. Some were still burning out of control. Others had burned themselves out. Central Long Island had descended into pockets of chaos, but it appeared that most of its residents weren't interested in participating in any of it. They were in their cars trying to get away. Few in their right mind wanted to stay on an island where some strange disease was spreading like wildfire.