S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (23 page)

One glance at our wetsuits and gear and he'd know we weren't there for sex. Well, maybe the kinkiest kind.

How many years would they add to our Life Service Commitment for breaking into a Forbidden Zone? Five years? Ten? How many more would they tack on once they figured out we'd not only gone to LI but then left one of us there, most likely to die? Another twenty?

Thirty years off the top of our life expectancies. That would make us middle aged already.

“
This way,” Reggie says, guiding us to the closest wall.

The moment Ashley's on solid ground, she falls to her knees and starts wiping away the water dripping off our bodies and onto the walkway. “Have to dry it,” she says. “Have to hide it.” She's becoming delirious. But her efforts only end up making a bigger mess.

“
We can't worry about that right now,” Micah quietly tells her. He gently pulls her to her feet and urges her up the walkway toward the parking garage where his car and Jake's van are parked. He turns one last time to Kelly and says, “We'll talk about it once we're back home and we've had a chance to clear our heads a little.”

But Kelly doesn't wait. As soon as we're out of sight of the tunnel, he turns to me and says, “I know what you're thinking, Jess. The answer's still no. Leave it to the officials.”

“
Kel's right,” Reggie says as he shrugs his way out of his wetsuit. It surprises me a little to hear him agreeing with Kelly. They rarely ever agree on anything, and even when they do, Reggie usually ends up arguing the other side, just to be difficult.

A look of surprise and distrust flashes across Kelly's face. He still blames Reggie for everything that's happened. He still thinks Reggie pushed him over the railing here days before. It was how we ended up knowing the tunnel was still open, even after all these years after LI was declared off-limits. Would any of this have happened otherwise—the trip, losing Jake—if we hadn't found that out?

Maybe.

I don't know what to believe anymore. I believe Kelly thinks he was pushed, but I can't picture Reggie doing something like that. He's big and strong and certainly capable, but he's more of a talker than a doer.

I make my way over to Ashley. She's still just sitting there. I reach over and grab her Link out of her hand and wake the screen. Jake's last message is still there. I hold it up for the others to see. “He was still alive after the passage collapsed. He said he was going back. He made it. I just know it.”

“
You don't know,” Reggie says. The fear is clear in his eyes. He just doesn't want to admit he's chickenshit. He's the largest of our group, the strongest, and yet he's like a little kid sometimes. I almost tell him so, but Micah speaks first.

“
That's why we have to go back,” he says.

“
Thank you.” I hand the Link back to Ash.

“
And then what?” Kelly asks. He angrily swipes his wet hair out of his face. “The place is swarming with zombies. And, okay, let's assume Jake's cartridge lasted him the whole way back—I doubt it, but let's just say it did—how's he going to get out of the water? You saw how many there were. They'd surround him in seconds. He'll be attacked.” He shakes his head. “And so would we. No, Jake's…”

He doesn't want to say it out loud. He doesn't have to. We all know it's very likely Jake would be bitten. There were just too many IUs.

“
I don't care,” I say. I refuse to believe he'd let himself get taken that easily. “He'll find a way. If any of us could, it's him.”

Kelly slaps the side of the van in frustration. The obvious jealousy on his face just makes me even angrier. He has no reason to be jealous.

Well, maybe a little.

“
Maybe
you
wouldn't make it,” I say, knowing how hurtful I'm being and yet not really caring. “But Jake's had survival training.”

“
What the hell is it with you two anyway?” Kelly shouts.

Micah tries to quiet him down.

“
It's not like that, Kel,” I say. “There's nothing between us.”

The worst part about it is, it's a lie: Jake was hitting on me, back at the dojang where I train in hapkido. At least, in his own awkward way, he was. And I'd been flattered. But then I had to go and mention it to Kelly afterward. I knew even before I said it that it would bother him, but I…

What?

I'd wanted to hurt him.

He'd been acting strangely for a couple weeks by then, ignoring me, becoming moody and distracted. I just wanted him to pay some attention to me.

Is that why I'm so adamant about going back? Because I want Kelly to be jealous? Am I really that selfish and petty?

“
I wish you'd explain it, then,” Kelly pleads. “Because I'd really, really like to understand why you're willing to risk your life for this guy.”

“
He's a friend,” I say. “And it's just common decency. We can't just leave him behind.”

“
We can't risk our own lives again, Jessie,” Reggie quietly says. “Not without proof.”

“
And how do you expect to get it without going back?”

Reggie doesn't answer. He knows it's a classic catch-22.

“
You'd do it for Ashley,” I add. “Even without proof.”

He gawps for a moment, but then closes his mouth. At least he knows the truth when it hits him square between the eyes.

“
Please,” Ashley sniffs. She's still shaking like a leaf, but she's managed to compose herself a bit. “I know we got Jake into this mess, but can we just drop it for a little while? I just can't think about that right now. We almost died back there.”

And that finally shuts us all up.

Micah breaks into Jake's van by recoding the electronic lock with his Link. We dry ourselves off as best we can and change back into our street clothes. Nobody says anything about the lock. We all just accept it as a matter of course. We're all used to Micah's wizardry with just about anything that has a chip in it. His hacking abilities are so much better than any of the rest of ours.

Nevertheless, it's this very ease with such matters that reinforces my earlier worries about him.

It was while we were back on the island. We found out that he'd hacked into our implants. He said it was a necessary step in his plan to hack ArcWare's codex, the remote zombie controller used in
The Game
. For hardcore electronic gamers,
The Game
is the ultimate challenge. But only the rich and well-connected ever get the coveted invite. They're the only ones who can afford the minimum buy-in price, which includes an implanted zombie—Player—and ArcWare's cybernetic set-up with which the Player can be controlled. There was no way any of us would ever get to play. Not legitimately, anyway. We were just too poor.

A few weeks ago we'd tried hacking in, but the program ended up being far too sophisticated, even for Micah. The firewalls are too complex and the coding language too arcane. We got discovered—at least by the program's built-in safety mechanisms—and it locked us out.

Micah insisted that all he'd need to complete the job was a backdoor into ArcWare's codex. A physical hack, in other words. But that could only be obtained from the
inside
, from the other side of the wall surrounding LI, past the EM barrier that protects the Forbidden Zones.

We were all secretly counting on Micah to be successful. Once he had access, it was supposed to be a cakewalk to reprogram any gaming device to take control of any Player in Gameland. We would be able to play
The Game
.

And the hack to our implants? Just a necessary step that permitted him to subtract our L.I.N.C. signals from any other signals he hoped to pick up while we were there—the Players, in other words. The Controlled Undead. The zombies that those rich prick gamers bought and used to play
The Game
.

It was obvious that Jake had been upset to learn his implant had been hacked. He wasn't a gamer or hacker like the rest of us, so couldn't truly appreciate the implications like we did. He was along simply for the adventure. But Micah had given everyone his promise that he'd wipe all our numbers from his program once we got back. I intend to make sure he does.

After
we save Jake.

“
What do you think his family's going to do when he doesn't show up at home tonight?” I ask. “They'll report him missing. The van, too. If the cops find it here, it's just a matter of time before they trace it all back to us. The checkpoints have a record of us coming here. That's why we need to go back. The longer we wait, that harder it's going to be to explain.”

“
There's no family,” Ashley says. “It's just him and his uncle. And Joe's going to be in Albany at least until tomorrow.”

“
I'll deal with him if I have to,” Micah says.

“
How?”

He shrugs. “I'll figure something out. Him and the checkpoint records, too,” he adds. He doesn't elaborate and nobody asks. None of us want to know what he's planning, especially since that kind of hacking borders on criminally insane. We just want everything fixed.

“
There's also the problem with my lost Link,” I say. I'd dropped it while trying to get away from those first Infected Undead at the refueling station. It happened right after Kelly sent me the picture of the surprise he'd been planning for me. “How're we going to get through the checkpoints without it?”

“
They only scanned us coming in,” Reggie says hopefully. “Maybe they won't check going home.”

“
You
think
.”

“
Jessie, please.”

But I'm not done. I lean over the back bumper and pull one of the plastic packing crates to me. It holds a dozen more of the disposable rebreather cartridges, still unused.

“
If we go back now, we could be home—
all
of us and my Link—by morning. Then there won't have to be any ‘fixing' by Micah.”

Kelly takes the cartridge from my hand and tosses it back in the crate. He pushes the box back into the darkness inside the van. “Nobody's going anywhere tonight except home.”

Micah nods. “As much as I know you're right, Jess, Kelly's got a point. We need to rest, recover. We're all exhausted, not thinking straight. If we attempt to go back now—despite all our good intentions—we'll all just end up zombie meat.”

“
Besides,” Reggie adds, “the tunnel's blocked, remember?”

It's a lame excuse and he knows it. There's the other bore of the tunnel. There's no reason to believe it's blocked, too.

But I don't argue. I'm suddenly so bone-weary, struggling just to keep myself from collapsing right there in the parking garage, that I give up. The truth comes crashing down on me: there's no way any of us would be able to swim the length of a mile-long tunnel for a third time that day—much less turn around to make the return trip. We all need to get some sleep and a warm meal inside of us. Even as well-conditioned as my body is from hapkido training, it isn't used to what we've all just been through.

Kelly grabs my arms and draws me to him. “I promise, Jessie, we'll talk it over first thing in the morning.”

“
It'll be a short talk then, Kel. Just long enough for me to tell you that I'm coming back.” I look around at the rest of them. “With or without the rest of you, I'm coming back. Jake would do the same for us.”

Micah nods. “But first sleep and food.”

“
Okay,” Kelly whispers. “You win.”

He pulls me to him. I rest my head against his chest, pressing my ear right over his heart, and listen to what it tells me. I know in that moment that he's lying. Once we leave this zone, he knows I won't be able to come back. The checkpoint guards won't let me through without my Link. And who knows how long it'll take for me to get a replacement.

But I won't let that stop me. I will come back in the morning. Even if Micah has to hack into every goddamn Link and Stream to do it.

Even if I have to walk.

The ride back home
is quiet and thick with tension. I sit and stare out the passenger window of Jake's van as Kelly drives. Reggie and Ash are with Micah in his car.

The abandoned skyscrapers of lower Manhattan yield to the derelict, but still occupied, skyscrapers of central Manhattan and New Wall Street. We cross the Hudson and work our way north along the fringe of New Jersey. Nobody points out the old football stadium this time. Or the ghost town of the Teterboro Airport. Or anything. We only see our nightmare.

We breeze through all of the checkpoints. None of the guards scans us, just as Reggie had predicted. They do, however, search both vehicles and warn us about the curfew before letting us through. Exactly the same as last time.

While we sit and idle behind Micah's car at one of the checkpoints, I overhear Reggie asking one of the guards what they're looking for, but the guy won't say. He's all business. They all are. I wonder what there could possibly be in New York that anyone could want to smuggle out. Playboy magazines?

Kelly pulls up to the curb at my house. He sits for a moment, fiddling with his Link, almost certainly wondering if he should ask about the picture he'd send to me on the island. Can he sense how much I want to avoid answering him?