Deadman's Switch & Sunder the Hollow Ones (26 page)

“I understand perfectly well,
brah
. It's not a fucking game. Is that what you think I've been doing, treating this like a god damn game? You're right. All this time I've been busy whupping zombie ass, it's because I'm counting points and keeping track of who gets to go first and all that shit! What the hell are you guys thinking? I'm trying to get us back home!”

Ashley gets up off the bed. Her arms are crossed over her chest and she stares at the floor.

“Well?”

“We've already decided. You and Micah should stay behind.”

“Micah?” I say, choking. “That makes even less sense. He's our best hacker—”

“He's useless,” Ashley says, and she quickly blushes. “He can't remember, I mean.”

“This is bullshit! He'll remember. You think you three can handle crossing Gameland all by yourself?”

“Four.”

“What?”

“Four. Kelly's coming with us.”

My head shoots up at Reggie. “Oh no. You can't expect me to stay behind when he goes with you. Didn't you hear a word I said outside? No fucking way.”

The door opens up behind Reggie and he moves aside so Kelly can come in. Was he waiting just outside all this time? Was he listening?

“I just spoke with Micah,” he says. “It's all set. You two will stay here and figure out a way to get through the wall.”

“What? No fu— Wait a minute. Do you think I'm bad luck, too?”

“No, of course not, Jessie.”

“Well, I'm not leaving you. And I'm not letting you leave me.”

He leans in and grabs my arms hard. There's a ferocity in his eyes that immediately quiets me. He gestures to the others and they quickly file out of the room.

“You're hurting me, Kel.”

“I…” he stammers, his eyes flicking between mine. He doesn't loosen his grip. “I need you to stay behind. I need you to do this for me, Jess.”

I frown. “What's going on? What aren't you telling me?”

“It's killing me, Jessie,” he whispers in my ear. “But I can't say anything right now. Just know that I love you. That's all you need to know.”

Then he leans in to kiss me. I'm too shocked to respond or resist. At the last possible moment, he tilts his head up and the kiss lands on my forehead, dry and cold. And the look he gives me tells me one more thing: He doesn't expect to ever see me again.

He's out the door before I can move. By the time I can, Reggie's standing at the door, blocking it.

“Get the hell out of my way!” I shout at him, trying to push past him. “I hate you! I hate you all!”

He gently pushes me back into the room with one hand, waggling a finger at me. He opens his mouth to speak but doesn't say anything. After a moment, he closes the door behind him.

“No!” I slam my fist against the door. “You bastards!” I grab the knob and rip it open and race out into the hallway. Micah catches my arm before I can get out there.

“You need to calm down, Jessie.”

“Oh, so you're
all
against me now?”

“No.”

“I won't stay here. I am
not
going home without you guys!” I try to push him aside too, but he holds a finger up to his lips and gives me a quick warning shake of the head. I can hear the others talking in the other room, discussing their plans. I hear Jake mention that they're taking Micah's tablet with the map on it.

“What—?”

“Shh! Just listen, Jess,” he whispers. “Kelly didn't explain everything to me, but I got the sense he thinks you're in some kind of danger.”

“From Jake?”

“I don't know. I tried to talk him out of us splitting up, but he wouldn't listen to me. He was very insistent. He doesn't want you going to Jayne's Hill.”

“Why not?”

“Again, I don't know. But something tells me he knows what he's talking about.”

I run my hands restlessly through my hair and pace from one side of the hallway to the other. Step, turn, step, turn.

Focus. Breathe. Step. Breathe.

“He can't stop me,” I decide. “None of them can. What are they going to do? Have me arrested? Detained? ‘Yes, Officer, my girlfriend is following me through zombie-infested lands because she's worried about me and I'd really like it if you took her into custody.' Is that what he'll do?”

Micah shakes his head and cracks a smile. “Yes, this I remember, the old Jessie, not the running scared one we've been seeing lately.”

“Running scared?” I sputter. “Who the hell have you been watching?”

He shrugs. “I don't know, but not this. This is the real you. Finally. Brassy, cocky, indignant. Not the you everyone else wants you to be.”

This startles me. It's been a struggle for me lately, trying to do the right thing. Trying to do what other people have told me I should do. Ignoring the tiny voice inside of me.

“You're thinking of Ashley,” I grumble. “She's the one with the ‘tude.”

“No, underneath her hard exterior it's all soft marshmallow. You know that. I know that. Most importantly, Reggie knows that. Why do you think he's so protective of her? You, on the other hand, you wear your marshmallow part on the outside. It buffers the toughness inside.”

“Yeah, my bad-luck heart of stone. I know.”

“No, not stone. But you are pretty damn tough inside. Maybe…maybe a little too tough sometimes.”

I frown at him, but I feel my anger leaking away. “Well, maybe by splitting up, we can accomplish more,” I say. “You and I can work on getting through the wall.”

“That's my girl. We'll get out of this, but not if we're constantly fighting each other.”

I stare at him for a moment, wondering if his amnesia has done something to him, changed him.

“What?” he asks, giving me a bemused look.

“I think I like this new Micah,” I mumble. “The old one never got this serious about anything. Thoughtful, yes, but not serious.”

“I've always been this serious, Jess. I just happen to be sober.” He laughs. “But if you tell anyone this is the real me, I'll have to kill you.”

“Is that the best you can come up with? So cliché.”

In the kitchen, the others murmur as they make their plans.

Micah reaches up and is about to touch my face when he suddenly draws back, confusion in his eyes. He looks away. “I— We should get back out there.”

He quickly turns around and leaves, walking stiffly away. And for the third time in as many minutes, I'm left speechless by a man and the confusion of feelings coursing through me towards him.

I shake my head and wonder what just happened. Did Micah just come on to me? Ever since I've known him I've never seen him express any romantic interest in any girl. Or boy, for that matter.

“That
was definitely strange,” I whisper. Then I head out to where the others are preparing to leave.

 

Stephen's still sitting
on the floor in front of the couch, his head buried in his arms. He hasn't moved a muscle. I'm surprised—and relieved—to find Tanya still breathing. I can hear the gurgle of air passing through her mangled throat. In the kitchen, the others are gathered around the kitchen table looking at the map on the tablet. Micah looks up, then quickly buries his head as he points to something and makes a comment. The others nod and make agreeable sounds.

Outside the window, the sun hangs low on the horizon, resting, it seems, right on the top edge of the wall. Two and a half hours of sunlight left, max. They're going to have to hustle to make it, and they still have to figure out a way through the electrified fence.

I kick Stephen. “Hey, asshole. Get up!”

“She's stopped bleeding.”

Blood covers his hands and arms. It stains his shirt and pants. It's puddled beneath Tanya, the stain leaching into the cushions. Her skin is a sickly grayish-white and her eyes have sunken into her skull. They're ringed by dark circles. Of course she's stopped bleeding; she ran out of blood. The thought turns my stomach, but then I remember the more immediate concern: she's close to turning.

“You need to do something about her. And soon.”

He looks over and nods. But then he says, “She might pull through.”

“She won't, damn it! Look at her. There's nothing left in her.”

I reach down and yank his arm. He doesn't resist.

“She would've been quicker and stronger than any of us,” he whispers. She'd have no fear, be immune to disease, to cancer. Resistant to aging.” He smiles then and caresses her forehead. “She would've been immortal.”

“Not so immortal after all.”

His face twists and he thrusts me weakly away from him.

“Is she infectious?”

“What?”

“Infectious? Can she pass the disease onto one of us?”

He doesn't answer.

“What does Arc get out of it? You already have control over the Undead. Why make someone Undead when they're still alive?”

“Arc?” Stephen laughs bitterly. “They wouldn't know what to do with something like this!” He takes in a breath and settles back to stroking Tanya's hair. “Control,” he answers. “They developed a new generation of implants that could be activated before death. Safer, you know, than waiting till afterward. Problem was, they were failing. People were rejecting them right and left, falling off of streams. The government was in a panic. Can you imagine what would've happened if people knew there were twenty six million people out there who thought they were protected, but then could become Infected Undead if there happened to be another outbreak?”

“Twenty-six million?” I gasp.

“Arc formed two teams to tackle the problem of getting the body to accept the devices. The first team was looking at new materials. They worked. That's what you kids got. My team was working on a new serum. But then I discovered this.”

“Why her? And why Kelly?
”

Stephen lays a hand on Tanya's wound. He doesn't even seem to have heard me. “Mabel was my pilot experiment. She was our only Volunteer. Arc paid her family a fortune. The serum worked.”

“Mabel?” I say. “Are you telling me she was…” I gesture at Tanya. “She was the same as her?”

My stomach roils at the thought. Mabel
touched
me. She touched my naked body and did things to me while I was unconscious and she was—

My skin crawls in revulsion.

“What the hell was she?”

“A carrier. Just like Miss Saroyan here.”

“She spoke. She seemed alive.”

“She
was
alive!” Stephen retorts. “Are you stupid or something?”

I'm so tempted to pull out the pistol and use my last bullet on him, but I don't.

“Imagine,” he says, unaware of my thoughts. “A living, breathing zombie, faster and stronger than anyone alive or undead, capable of thinking. And all under Arc control, all using the old implants. I was about to make Arc billions and they snubbed their nose at me!”

So that's why Mabel seemed so much stronger than she looked before you killed her. That's why she reanimated.

“I managed to kill your superhuman experiment, and who the hell am I? Just a girl.”

Stephen gives me a dark look. “Doesn't matter. She was a guinea pig. Beaucorps was already looking for independent confirmation. Four tests. He wouldn't let me go upstairs with the results until he had it. Unfortunately, nobody volunteered.”

“Damn right,” I say. “Why would anyone—”

“We sent Mabel out to find a suitable candidate. It was another test of how well we could control her.”

“You sent an infected person into the general population?”

“Beaucorps found Miss Saroyan here. Mabel tracked her down and picked her up.”

“Based on her ping records.”

Stephen shrugs. “I don't know the details.”

“Was Tanya under Arc control?”

“When I left the mainland to come here? Yes. She obviously wasn't when we left LaGuardia, though. Arc must have disconnected from her when they realized what you were planning.”

“Or she rejected the implant.”

Stephen shrugs. “That's what I believed.”

“Believed? You don't think so now?”

“I didn't think the shot worked at first. That's why I was coming, to try again. But I knew as soon as we came into Gameland. The signs are unmistakable: the hypersensitivity to the wall. By the same token, it also means her implant is still functioning.”

“I can feel the wall.”

He laughs drily. “Not like your friends can.”

“Why Kelly? Why give him the shot?”

“I had a new dose made up, planning to give it to Miss Saroyan. I'd tweaked it with a few minor improvements to the DNA codon usage—the way the genetic code is read inside the cells and how it's utilized to make proteins.”

“So why did you give the shot to Kelly instead?”

“Convenience. He was the only other one with a defective implant. It was either inject him or lose a perfectly good opportunity.”

I raise my hand to hit him, but someone grabs it. It's Micah.

“Let me go!”

“Just calm down,” he tells me. “It won't help.”

“It'll help me feel better.”

He struggles with me for a moment before letting go. I lower my arm. “Who's Beaucorps?” I demand. “Is he the man I overheard talking to Mabel that night?”

Stephen nods. “Head of Neuroleptic Research.”

“You said he wanted four tests. Kelly gave you three. Was there a fourth?”

“Yes. I don't know who it was.”

“One of us?”