S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (118 page)

He took a quick check around him, but nothing moved. Nothing threatened him. Crouching quickly, he unzipped the main compartment and pulled the edges apart.

Gaming gear?

He found a set of old goggles and gloves, but no boots, no console. The gear was useless without it. Carrying it around was just a waste of energy.

He dug deeper, but his fingers found only cans of food and bottles of water.

There was a snapping of twigs from the brush by the side of the road. He shot to his feet, his hand instinctively going to his hip. The bushes parted and out stepped Jessie. She was still buttoning up her jeans.

He turned away, chagrined at his own embarrassment.

“You were snooping through my stuff?” she accused, when she reached him. She didn't even give the dead zombie a second glance.

“Can you blame me?” he replied.

She glowered at him for a moment before snatching it off the road and closing the zipper. “You coming or not?” she shouted over her shoulder.

He picked up her weapons. “Hey!”

“What?”

He jogged up to her. “You might as well carry these yourself.”

She stared at them for a second before taking them from his outstretched hand. “I could've taken them away from you at any time if I'd wanted to.”

He chuckled, realizing that she was probably right. He was just beginning to appreciate how capable she was.

 

“You want to tell me where we're going?”

Jessie kept walking as if she hadn't heard Grant's question. But he knew she had by the way she sped up to avoid answering him.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead and jogged until he caught up to her. He was beginning to wonder if he'd be able to keep up the pace as long as she could. The girl was like a machine. No doubt she knew he was tiring.

They'd been walking now for almost three hours, resting maybe twenty minutes total. Most of that down time had been spent without either of them talking, despite his few attempts to engage her in conversation. After a while, the heat and humidity took their toll and he kept quiet. His uniform was soaked through with sweat. She was sweating too, but not as much.

She's twenty years your junior.

“If you're planning on running—”

“If you're going to keep making as much noise as this,” she said, “I just might.” She glared at him over her shoulder, then pointed at a grove of trees.

He squinted in the direction she indicated and saw nothing at first, but then he did— three Undead, their backs turned to the road. One of them had its head raised to the sky, as if pondering the clouds rolling past:
Is it going to rain again? Does that look like a turtle to you or a hippopotamus?
Another one was completely naked, its clothes long since lost. They all appeared emaciated, their skin wizened and browned by the weather and years passed without eating.

“Look,” she said, sighing and slowing her pace slightly, “I don't mean to be rude or ungrateful, but to me this isn't a game. It's about finishing what I came to do and then figuring out how to stay alive.”

“I appreciate your candor,” he replied. “But they're just a couple-three IUs. Nothing we can't handle.”

She stopped and turned. “Three? How many have you seen since we left the church in Melville?”

He shrugged. “Including the one on the road and those three? Ten, eleven. A dozen at the most.”

“First of all, there are at least five over beneath that tree.” She swiveled her arm slightly counterclockwise and pointed at an old school. A set of rusted playground swings hung motionless on metal chains, weeds reaching past them. A plastic jungle gym with its colors faded nearly completely away had been overtaken by vines. A solitary school bus stood between them, its front end protruding through the perimeter fence it had crashed through. The back door of the bus stood open, the windows smashed out. The roof was blackened by a fire long since gone out.

“I don't see anything.”

“Exactly.”

“I'm not following.”

Jessie walked over to the side of the road and appeared to be searching the ground for something. Grant waited, his hand on the gun. Finally, she bent down and picked up a couple walnut sized rocks. She set her feet and hurled one as hard as she could. It landed in the grass about ten feet shy of a rusted van on the frontage road. The second one shattered the windshield.

“Down,” she whispered harshly, and crouched behind the guard rail.

He joined her and waited.

Within minutes a dozen Undead had appeared, as if by magic, emerging from places he would never have thought could hide them.

“It's the sun,” she told him in a low voice. “I think it dries them and they don't like it. They hide during the day unless something draws them out, some sound or smell. That bus is probably full of them, inside and underneath.”

“Hide?” he said, doubtfully.

“How many IUs do you think there are here, on the island?”

“Not many. The outbreak took less than—”

“Twenty thousand people,” Jessie finished for him. “Yes, I know. That's the official line. And supposedly most of them were later removed, reclaimed by families, cremated. But it's not true, just like everything else Arc has been telling us. I've met people who were here when it happened, as well as people who stayed here afterward. The population of the island was almost ten million when the outbreak hit. One man told me that they blocked the exits and prevented anyone from getting out. Another woman told me there were probably over a million still here when they bombed the bridges.”

“A million?” He shook his head. “I don't believe that.” But neither did he
disbelieve
her.

“I've seen hundreds of them come out of the woodwork,” she said, standing back up. “I've seen them hiding underneath cars and beneath pieces of wood and inside garbage cans you'd think were too small for them. They're everywhere out here. All they need is a reason to come out, like you yakking away. Yes, we could fight our way through a whole bunch of them, but I'd rather save my energy for other things.” She pointed down at the seven or eight Infecteds gathering around the van. “So please, try and keep it down.”

“Fine, but at least tell me where we're going,” he whispered.

“I told you— the wall.”

* * *

A half hour later they topped a rise in the road and caught their first glimpse of the eastern part of the Gameland wall. From the distance, it appeared like the gray fringe of a green ocean, the permanent crest of a wave perpetually rising over a sea of untrimmed trees. The mold-covered roofs of abandoned houses bobbed like flotsam through it.

“We'll be able to start feeling it pretty soon,” Jessie told him. “The wall. That is, if the network's still up.”

“
Still?
I thought it was down.”

“It came back on about a half hour after we left the church.”

“How could you tell that? I thought you had to be close to that Player to, you know, hear its thoughts.”

“Micah. His name was—
is
Micah.”

“Right. So, how?”

“It's just a feeling I have.”

“Uh huh.”

The truth was, she'd been hearing whispers for a while, the voices of other Players. Despite Micah's insistence that it wasn't possible, she knew what she heard. There had to be some sort of leakage or something, because otherwise how could she explain hearing Master Rupert before she ended him but not after?

In any case, she hoped that once she reached the wall and got through it, they'd stop.

Which meant ditching Grant.

She thought about his daughters, which he'd only mentioned in passing the day they'd met back at the training facility. For their sake, she didn't want to kill him. She knew what it was like to grow up without a father. She didn't need that on her conscience.

Eventually, the wall dominated the horizon, rose above it, blotted out the sky. She could definitely feel its effects on her now. And it was clearly affecting Grant, too. She caught him shaking his head and rubbing his ears like they were ringing.

At the end of the road, which disappeared straight beneath the wall, she found a portal. Several temporary concrete road barriers were stacked haphazardly beside it, the only objects within a hundred feet, with the exception of the trunk of a dead maple tree. “We're here.”

“I can't let you go through.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can't. Or, if I did, I wouldn't be able to come back in again,” he told her. “I'd be finished with all this. I'd lose everything.”

Jessie sighed and shook her head. He was still thinking about this as a game. “You're not going through. You can still play your silly game, make your money, just not by killing me.”

He didn't move. “You think I'm just going to let you walk out, let ten million dollars slip through my fingers?”

“Yes. You let me live this long. You're curious.”

“That's an awful big assumption. Maybe I was testing you. Or waiting for the Stream to come back online.”

“If that was the case, you would've done it ten minutes ago.”

His eyes flicked to the sword in her hand. She let it fall to the road, then spread her arms out, giving him a wide open target. He could shoot her where she stood. His hand was just inches away from the pistol on his hip. He'd have it out and a bullet in her head or heart before she could reach him.

His hand jerked and moved toward his side. Jessie tried not to flinch. But he reached into his pocket and drew out his Link instead.

“Yes?” he said, placing it to his ear. His frown deepened as the person on the other end spoke. “Now?” he asked and looked around them at the desolate scenery. “Here?”

Jessie watched as he disconnected. “Who was that?” she asked.

He thumbed the Link off, then unclipped the pistol and drew it out of the holster. “I'm sorry. I was going to let you go. Really.”

“Who was that?”

“My partner.”

 

 

 

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE TRANSMISSION

FROM
: Qi Jacque Ma, Chairman and Founder, Abalila HG

TO
: Padraig Harrison, President, Arc Properties

DATE
: September 14, 2043

SUBJECT
: RE: Gameland   Long Island

Dear Mister Harrison;

Our test audience was highly impressed with last month's exhibition of the gaming arcade at Long Island, but your skillful manipulation of the current live demonstration is especially remarkable. As such, I would like to invite you to meet with our executive team in Xanghou so that we may move forward with negotiations.

Yours truly,

Jacque

“Negotiate?” Jessie whispered. She didn't dare raise her head above the barrier for fear they'd shoot her. “Are you out of your mind?”

Grant shrugged. “You convinced me, didn't you? And I'm not the most reasonable person around, either.”

“More reasonable than them!” She flung her hand in the direction of the arcade, where three more Live Players, including Grant's former partner Rosie Haycock, lay hidden from view. “They're not interested in anything I have to say. All they're thinking about is how ten million divided four ways instead of three is only two-and-a-half each!”

“Two-and-a-half is still a lot of money.”

She looked at him in shock. “So, what you just said about letting me go, that was a lie?”

He winced. “No.”

“Trust me, Grant. They're not interested in letting me escape. They'll stop me at any cost. If you go out there, you won't be coming back.”

“I don't think so.”

“You were wrong about them teaming up.”

Another wince. “They're gamers, competitors, not murderers. They won't do anything to me. And I know Rosie; she's a decent gal. Let me talk to them. I'll explain what you told me.”

“Not murderers? Really? You were willing to murder me.”

He opened his mouth to protest, then shut it without saying a word. It was true. He had set out to be the one to collect the reward for her head, to take the prize away from the others. They'd do the same if given half the chance. But would they resort to killing each other for a bigger slice of the pie? That seemed a lot more likely than letting her go.

He lifted the Link to his ear and thumbed off the privacy setting and activated the speaker. “I'll meet with Rosie, but only on your word you all keep your distance until we agree. I see anything suspicious and I'm doing it myself.” He put a finger to his lips. “And you all will get nothing.”

“
Fine.
” It was a female voice, though it didn't belong to Rosie Haycock. “
We understand. You want the girl for yourself. But there's enough to go around, isn't there?
”

They could hear her laughter across the infertile ground.

“
Tie her up
.”

“That's not necessary, Jo. You've got her surrounded. It's a hundred feet of open ground in every direction. She can't escape.”

“
Tie her up. Take her weapons. Check to see if she's still got her EM pistol. Then send a picture so we can be sure she can't escape.
”

Jessie shook her head.

“All right,” Grant replied. “As long as you keep your distance.”

“
Now you're talking.
”

More laughter.

“I'll speak with Rosie only,” Grant said. “Which way is she?”

“
Look south.
”

A hand emerged from behind a rusted truck, waved once, then quickly disappeared.

“No funny business,” Grant warned.

“Just do what we fucking tell you!” Jo shouted from the opposite side.