S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (88 page)

The park! That's where they came from!

Cassie was still pushing on her, frantically trying to get toward the door. “Get back!” Lyssa shrieked. She shifted her weight to block her daughter, thrusting a knee out.

“My shoe!” Cassie cried.

“Ramon, get us out of—!”

The door flew from her fingers. It swung wide and scraped against the hood of the Caddy.

She could hear Ramon grunting, fighting off more of the afflicted. She realized they were surrounded. Cassie was still fighting her, trying to get past. And now Shinji was leaping at her back like a rabid dog.

Cassie slipped through, planting herself across Lyssa's legs. She was reaching toward the door.

“Stop it!” Lyssa screamed. “You're going to get bitten!”

“My shoe, Mama! I need it!”

Pain flared in Lyssa's hip. The muscles cramped, sending a ball of pain down her thigh. She cried out and started to slip backward. And then she saw the shoe, stuck between the door and the frame.

Cassie lunged forward. Lyssa twisted to block her and the pain in her hip exploded. She ignored it and grabbed Cassie's shoulder. The shoe disappeared out of the van, tumbling to the road. Shinji yelped in pain as Cassie kicked him. Lyssa gritted her teeth and pulled herself up.

Two attackers, both women, both wearing tennis outfits, were already in the doorway. They were beginning to climb in.

Their teeth flashed crimson. Their eyes were empty sockets.

The Cadillac leapt forward, crushing the women's torsos with a sickening crunch and folding them back over the car's hood. When it pulled back, the women crumpled into the gap. But more of the afflicted came. They crawled over the bodies, sliding over the hood.

There were dozens now, emerging out of the darkness.

Shinji was clawing Lyssa's back, raking her arm. His uncontrolled barks pierced her ears.

“Hold him!” Lyssa cried, as she thrust a foot out at another attacker. “Cassie, stop Shinji!”

She found a hand hold above her, a handle of some sort in the bank of computers, and began to pull herself up. With her free arm, she shoved Shinji back again. Cassie had a hold of his collar and pulled him into a bear hug, but he was still leaping forward.

Lyssa was on her knees now, moving toward the opening. Incredibly, the woman with the shredded arm rose from beneath the cars.

How can she be standing? How can her back not be broken?

But it was broken. Her hips had been crushed and the shards of her pelvic bones had pierced through her skin, through her bloodied tennis skirt, half of it torn away. Her legs were mangled, and yet they somehow supported her.

Shock swept over Lyssa, numbing her to what she was seeing, the impossibility of it, impelling her only to react.

The woman fell into the van, bending in ways a person shouldn't bend. Her body collapsed as the splintered end of her femur broke through the fleshy part of her hip. None of this stopped her. She clawed her way in, a wet rasping sound springing from her throat. Lyssa leaned forward and planted a hand on the top of her head to push her away. Her thumb sank deep into the woman's crushed skull. She could feel fragments shifting, grinding. A thick liquid oozed out. The woman went suddenly limp and stopped moving.

The van jumped backward, throwing Lyssa onto her back again. Her thumb pulled free of the skull with a loud
shloop!
The woman flipped out of the van and landed spread eagle on the hood of the Cadillac.

Ramon switch direction and drove forward. They slammed into the car in front. Cassie tumbled over Lyssa's body, screaming. She slipped toward the doorway and began to slide out.

“Stop!” Lyssa yelled at Ramon. But she heard him shift again. If he reversed, Cassie would be crushed. The engine revved. Lyssa twisted and reached for her. She snagged her belt loop and pulled just as the van leapt backward. Cassie flew up and over Lyssa and landed on Shinji.

The other woman, partner of the first, rose from beneath the car. She hissed, as if angry at Lyssa for lobotomizing her friend.

This isn't happening! This can't be happening. She should be dead!

And that's when Lyssa finally accepted the truth:
She's already dead. It's a zombie goddamn a fucking goddamn zombie
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
.

Lyssa's mind was on autopilot now.

She still had a hold of the metal handle. She pulled on it now, crying out as the bones in her wrist ground against each other. On her knees. Flailing with the other hand, she managed to grab onto the door. She heard Ramon shift again, felt the van shudder beneath her as the gears engaged. Forward. She braced herself so she wouldn't fall out. Cassie smashed into her, and another stab of pain shot up her arm. She almost lost her grip. She almost fell out.

Another sickening
CRUNCH
from the front. Lyssa and Cassie and Shinji tumbled away from the door. It slammed shut against someone's head.

A zombie! Say it! It's a fucking zombie!

The door slammed shut.

She didn't know what Ramon was trying to do. There wasn't any room to go anywhere. Was he trying to crush the zombies against the bumpers? It didn't seem logical.

She could hear other cars screeching around them, smashing sounds, screaming. Something large and metallic hit the side of the van, and they tilted.

Cassie was crying, flailing. Lyssa tried not to hurt her, but all she could do was hold on herself.

There was a loud
CRUNCH
, then the sound of wood splintering and metal bending, a terrible tearing sound. The van leapt forward, turning a wide arc to the right. Somehow, a way had been cleared through the traffic!

But they began to sink. The floor fell away, first toward the front, then to the right. Gravel crunched beneath them. They were tipping!

Over the curb, over several large obstructions. On four wheels again, still tilting forward, but apparently on solid ground.

The van fishtailed as they descended the unpaved slope. They hit the bottom, knocking the breath from Lyssa's lungs.

Cassie was wailing, terrified. Blood beaded from a cut on her forehead. Shinji seemed to be in shock. He'd managed to crawl into the front and was cowering on the floor in front of the passenger seat.

Lyssa managed to get up onto her knees and tried to look out through the windshield. Every part of her felt broken, bruised. The world was flashing past them—
people
were flashing past them. The afflicted were everywhere, stumbling about, their faces suddenly rising in the glow of the van's remaining headlight.

They jolted over the uneven surface, skidded on the slick grass. Ramon drove like a madman, heedless of the people he was hitting. Bodies slammed into them and were flung away.

“Where are you going?” Lyssa screamed, horrified at what he was doing. He actually seemed to be aiming for them.

A tree appeared out of the darkness directly in their path. Ramon wrenched the wheel to the right, only to find their way blocked by a low stone wall, beyond it nothing but darkness. He slammed on the brakes.

“I'm trying to get us out of here!”

He wrestled with the gearshift. The afflicted were everywhere now, closing in. Groaning in pain, Lyssa pulled herself onto the passenger seat; Shinji refused to budge.

Dead hands poked through the cracked window, brushed her hair. She jabbed at the switch to close it, snagging several fingers.

She caught glimpses of the highway above them, headlights stabbing the night in utter chaos. She heard gunshots, saw flashes. A woman stumbled toward the railing, tripped and cartwheeled over. She began to roll down the slope. Several of the afflicted followed after her. They fell as well, face-forward over the barrier, sliding and writhing down the hill like worms. At the bottom, they immediately began to get to their feet.

The woman appeared to have been stunned by the fall. She sat up and was quickly overcome by the afflicted.

The infected! The dead!

The woman cried out, but her shouts were quickly stifled.

The van shook as Ramon tried to force the transmission to shift. A face appeared outside Lyssa's window. The skin was pale, almost gray, darker about the lips and eyes. Her shirt was torn down the front, tattered and dangling. A strip of flesh had been pulled away from her chest, beginning at the collarbone and arching to the base of her sternum. The exposed breast was a pendulous mound of skinless flesh attached by the merest whisper of skin.

Lyssa leaned away, a scream crawling up her throat. The woman stared in at her for a moment, and there was a flicker of something in her eyes. Something almost human.

Recognition.

“The children,” Lyssa whimpered. “Oh god, what happened to the children?”

The mother slammed her forehead into the window. The force of the blow shook the whole van. She did it again and again, leaving bloody, greasy streaks and broken teeth on the glass.

“Get out of here!” Lyssa screamed at Ramon.

Blood oozed from the woman's nose. It cascaded down her lips in a curtain of red. Her tongue flicked out, as if tasting the blood. Then the lips pulled back in a sneer and another terrible hiss came from her throat.

SMASH!

Her bottom jaw shattered.

SMASH!

A cheek collapsed.

SMASH!

An eyeball popped. The fluid was thick and clear.

The gears finally engaged and the transmission caught with a loud
thunk!
The engine sputtered and threatened to die. But Ramon nursed it with a little gas, careful not to flood it.

Now they were moving, backing away. The woman fell.

Ramon picked up speed. The engine whined. Lyssa fumbled for the window button to release the two people still attached. She watched in horror as they stumbled. One fell, his arm stretching, shoulder popping. The joint dislocated, and the man's body began to swivel, tearing at the shoulder, twisting his shirt into a rope. With a thump, his feet caught beneath the front wheel. Skin and muscle peeled away from the fingers, leaving only the last few joints.

Lyssa finally managed to open the window, and the last person fell away. The severed fingertips dropped into the darkness beneath Lyssa's feet. She forced Shinji deeper into the well, but he seemed uninterested. She could feel him shivering. He seemed to be in shock.

Ramon spun the van around. They were headed down a narrow path, the white globes lining it dimly lit in some horrific parody of a romantic walk. They raced across a manicured lawn, past volleyball courts and swing sets, a bocce pit. And there, incredibly, was a duck pond. The birds rose out of the dark pool in raucous panic and flew off into the night.

“Where the hell is the exit?” Ramon cried.

“Where are we going? You're heading east! We need to turn around!”

“And go where?!” he shouted back. “We can't leave! The entire island is being written off. Why do you think they shut down the bridges and the tunnels? It's not because of some power outage. They have backup generators.”

He paused and scratched his cheek viciously, drawing a thin line of blood.

“They're flooding the tunnels. They don't want us to get out.”

 

Lyssa realized Ramon was right. The island was lost, and everyone along with it.

How long had the officials known? Why didn't they give any warning? It had to have been since very early that morning. Why else were there no military or police? They'd known, and they left the rest of them to fend for themselves.

A couple million people trapped on an island with a disease spreading like wildfire, a disease which killed and then brought its victims back to kill some more.

“We should head north,” she told him. “There'll be boats in Middle Neck.”

But Ramon didn't seem to hear her. She could see the madness in his eyes. And now they were heading straight back into the heart of the outbreak.

They were deep into the park now, further from the highway. There were fewer of the infected here, but each time they stopped, more would appear out of the darkness.

Lyssa was whimpering, the numbness of her own shock beginning to wear off. Images of the woman, of her chest torn open and the tattered muscles inside, the ribs spreading and contracting like an accordion. It was almost like she had been breathing.

A loud rattling sound was coming from beneath the van's hood. Whenever they accelerated, it rattled like a machinegun.

There was still nothing on the radio. The stations were saying that all highways and surface roads from Queens westward were parking lots. They were blaming emergency services for the poor way the evacuation had been handled and estimated that it would take another twenty-four hours before the traffic jams would clear. The reporters sounded very bitter and were quick to lay blame, but none of them seemed to understand the utter horror which was sweeping over the island; they clearly didn't have any first-hand accounts.

“We're going in circles,” she said after a while. “I've seen that building before.”

“We're not going in circles.”

“Well, we're sure as hell not getting anywhere, either.”

“We need to find shelter. We need to get inside. Regroup.”

“You don't think those people'll come and find us and attack us?”

“They're zombies, Lyssa. Let's call them what they are.”

She wanted to scream at him that she knew that, and yet she still wanted to tell him he was wrong.

“Just because you've seen a zombie movie or two,” she said, “suddenly you're an expert on them?”

“I've never seen— I never said I was an expert!”

“Then how do you know they're dumb, stupid, mindless things, Rame? If you're wrong and we go inside some building somewhere and they follow us, we're dead.”

“They couldn't even open a car door. They were tripping over their own feet.”