S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (125 page)

“And they don't know about this place?”

Brother Walter shrugged. “Maybe they do, but they probably won't think to come here. As far as they knew, it's not that important, as Father Heale rarely ever came here. He always used the tunnel.”

“In the wine cellar?”

“Yes.”

She remembered that day after she'd first met him, watching him from the upstairs bedroom window as he left the house through the front door. He'd stopped in the driveway next to one of the Infected. Had it been for show? Had he known she'd be watching him?

“So,” Brother Walter asked again, “why did you come back? Haven't you already done enough damage out there?”

“Out there? I don't understand.”

“The outbreaks. The Stream failing. The network crashing. I need to know why you've come back.”

“Outbreaks?” Jessie stood there for a moment unable to move. Her face felt numb. Her whole body felt numb. “How bad?”

“Very.”

“I have to go home,” she said, pushing herself away from the desk.

“Answer my question!”

“I need to go home!” But she stopped because she had no clue how she was going to do that. She raised her hands to her face. “I'm—Oh my god. Kelly.”

He stared at her for several seconds. “You didn't know?”

“There was an outbreak over a week ago, but it was contained. Are you saying it's started again? Are you saying it's my fault?” she cried. “I didn't even know it was happening!”

He bent down and opened the drawer and pulled out the Link. “Then why was this in your pack?”

“My Link? Where did you get it?”

“No, it's not yours.” He woke the screen and turned it so that she could see it. She recognized the differences immediately. It was Ben's Link, not hers. She'd forgotten she had it.

“Who are you with? Tell me!”

“I'm not with anyone!”

“Then why do you have this? What did you do?”

“I didn't do anything! I found it!”

“Don't lie to me! Who sent you here?”

“I told you, nobody sent me. I came on my own.”

“Did you activate the contingency?”

“I don't even know what that is! What contingency?”

He glared at her for several long seconds before answering. “The Dead Reckoning contingency,” he finally said. “It triggers the codex to self-destruct.”

 

“You're a god damn coward.”

Reggie towered over Kelly. Both boys seethed with anger, their faces red and sweaty.

Kelly didn't back down, though he certainly wanted to. He'd always been a little frightened by Reggie's size and strength. The boy didn't even know how powerful he was. But this time Reggie was wrong. “I need to take care of my family,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Jessie's your family!” Reggie roared. “God, brah, I can't believe you'd even say something like that. How could you even—” he sputtered, unable to find the words. “They're hunting her down! Your wife!”

“I know that!”

Reggie's eyes narrowed. “You've already written her off! God damn it, man.”

Kelly clenched his fists. He was so close to decking the boy right now. He could feel himself preparing to, could feel his feet almost taking root in the floor for leverage, the muscles in his arm and back tensing up.

But Reggie seemed to deflate. “I thought you loved her. I can't believe you'd give up on her like that.”

“I— I'm not giving up, Reg.”

“No, you're hiding.”

Reggie turned away in disgust. He raised his giant hands to his giant head and enveloped it.

“You weren't at the hospital,” Kelly said. “You didn't see what I saw. In case you forgot, there's an outbreak going on.” He pointed at the ceiling, where the sirens were pounding down on them. “I'm not hiding. We can't go anywhere.”

“Yeah, that's right, you're taking care of your family. Except, oh, I forgot, Jessie's your family, too!”

“Screw you, Reg.”

Reggie shook his head. “You don't deserve her. You were never right for her. She only loved you because you were safe and boring and stable, completely unsurprising, all the things she needed in her life. All the things she lacked because of who she is. But she doesn't need that anymore. She needs a man.”

Kelly's punch knocked Reggie back a couple steps. He braced himself for the retaliation, but it didn't come.

“She needs a man,” Reggie repeated.

“Oh, and that would be you?”

“Me?” Reggie made a noise of disgust. “Not me, brah. Definitely not me.”

“Don't say it, Reggie. Don't you speak his name.”

They glared at each other, each daring the other to cross that line.

Somewhere in the house above them, Kelly knew his parents and Kyle were trying desperately not to be scared. He wondered if they could hear him and Reg arguing, wondered if they knew what it was about.

They know. Of course, they know. What other reason would Reggie have for risking the cops to come out during a shelter-in-place if not to make him go back?

But if he did, Kyle would never forgive him.

“Jessie knows what she's doing,” he said. He didn't know if Reggie heard. He'd barely uttered it.

“And what will you do if she dies?” Reggie asked. “As far as you know, Doctor White's dead, which means no more cure. Jessie's your only hope now. She's the only one who can keep you and little Kyle alive. But you'd rather just bury your head in the sand and believe things will somehow get better on their own. Well, guess what. They're not.”

Kelly didn't answer. He felt trapped, like his life had stopped being his own a long time ago. He was being torn apart by the things he knew he should do, the things he was too afraid to do, and the things everyone else expected him to do.

“Answer me, Kelly.”

“I don't know!” he screamed. He picked up an old kitchen toaster his father had been trying to repair and hurled it across the cellar. It smashed against the wall and fell to the floor a mangled heap. “I don't know!”

Reggie lowered his head, shaking it in disgust. “Well, I'm going. It should be you, but since you're being such a chickenshit—”

“Reggie, stop.”

“No. You've always been a chickenshit. You've always just played it safe. You never take a risk unless someone forces you to.”

“Like you forced me to?”

Reggie frowned.

“You're the one who pushed me over the railing that day we were checking out the tunnel.”

“What? That wasn't me!”

“It doesn't matter. You're right. I've always been like that, safe. Maybe I need someone to push me. Maybe that's the reason I love Jessie, because she knew when to push and how hard. She was always behind me, nudging me forward, being daring. And all I ever did was hold her back.”

“Well, she needs you now, brah. She needs you to push.”

“I know.” Kelly was crying. “But I'm so god damn scared.”

Reggie gripped his arms. “You don't have to be. That's why I'm here.”

* * *

They slipped away from the Corben house as soon as the sun began to melt into the horizon, careful to watch for the police. Careful to watch for anyone, for that matter. But they didn't see a soul anywhere, neither living nor dead.

The trail along Rockwood Creek was almost invisible beneath the new growth the recent rains had fostered. Nobody had come this way in days.

“What's your plan for getting onto the island?” Reggie asked Kelly.

“I thought I'd just pull one out of my ass,” he snapped. He sighed and shook his head, and looked quickly around, afraid someone might overhear them. But there was no chance of that. Not with the siren blaring everywhere. “Sorry. I only just started trying to figure this out.”

Reggie didn't push, and Kelly was glad for it. The truth was, the thought of going had been in the back of his mind ever since he found out Jessie had gone, but getting there now, after she'd exposed their vulnerabilities, seemed next to impossible. Arc would surely have patched any gaps by now.

They arrived at the Daniels back fence just as the day was ending.

“What'd you tell your parents?” Reggie asked. “What'd they say when you told them you were going back?”

“Not really in the mood to talk about it,” Kelly replied.

“You wanna know what my parents said?”

“Not particularly.”

They crossed the yard. The grass was badly overgrown, nearly a foot high. As they went, they kicked up clouds of mosquitoes.

“They didn't even try to stop me.”

Kelly shrugged.

“They couldn't care less, brah.”

They climbed the stairs to the back porch. Kelly rapped heavily on the screen door, which rattled loosely against the frame. The broken glass from Reggie's midnight visit the week before had been replaced by a sheet of plywood.

“Or maybe they knew it wouldn't make any difference arguing with you, Reg. You can be pretty damn bullheaded sometimes.”

“No, brah. I don't think so.”

“Yes, you can.”

“No, I mean they didn't care. When we got back from Gameland the first time, I told them what we'd done. My father, you know what he said? He told me to shut my mouth and never speak about it again. He didn't want to hear about it. He said if it ever got out, he'd throw me out of the house. He was more worried about himself than me.”

He laughed sourly and shook his head.

“And then, after the second time, he said I must hate them because what I'd done was killing them both.” He raised his arms in defeat. “But I had to go back, Kel. I had to go back for you. And for Jake.”

“They care about you. They visited you in the hospital. You didn't see how scared your parents were after you disappeared from there. Your mom was a basket case. Your parents love you.”

Reggie's face tightened. He didn't answer.

Kelly knocked again, louder this time.

“They talked about going to Canada,” Reggie said. “Just like . . . . Well, like Ashley's parents. They wanted to run away.”

“And that's supposed to make me feel . . . what?”

“Jesus, dude. Don't you see? It's all wrong. Everything. It's not supposed to be like this, where everyone is more afraid of consequences than they are of actions. We should be taking care of each other instead of protecting ourselves
from
each other. It's no way to live. We need to fix it.”

“And how will going back fix anything, Reg? So we save Jessie, then what? Arc will still be Arc, and Jessie will still be an outlaw, and nothing will change.
Nothing will
ever change.
” He shook his head and made a show of looking inside through a knothole in the board. He was really hiding his tears of frustration. “Where is she?”

“She probably can't hear us because of the sirens. Or maybe she's sleeping.”

But Kelly shook his head. He looked worried. “I shouldn't have left her alone. I told her I was going to come back sooner than this. I hope she didn't get impatient.”

“She's fine.”

Kelly grabbed the doorknob and tried to force it open.

Reggie watched him struggle for a moment, then gestured for him to step aside. He made a fist and hit the plywood board just hard enough that it popped out. Then he reached around and unlocked the latch.

They started by searching upstairs. It felt weird to Kelly to walk into Jessie's bedroom, to see the ruffled bed, to remember lying next to her, her skin pressed up against his own. The memory almost overwhelmed him with emotion.

Reggie grabbed his arm and pulled him away. “Missus D isn't up here.”

The ground floor was similarly abandoned.

“Someone's been through here, though,” Reggie said, catching up with Kelly in the Colonel's office. “Did you notice all the closet and cabinet doors are open? I think someone was searching for something.”

“Maybe it was Jessie's mom looking.”

“Or maybe someone looking for her.”

“Eric did warn me people were coming for him. The police arrested him at the hospital and locked him up. Nobody's seen him since.”

“It's possible he got out and came to take Missis D away.”

Kelly turned to Reggie. “Without Jessie?” He shook his head. “They wouldn't leave without her.”

“Maybe he went back to Gameland to get her?”

Kelly shook his head again, harder this time. “Eric would've told me.”

They returned to the back of the house. Kelly opened the door to the basement. The light was already on. “Missus Daniels?” he called down the steps. “It's Kelly and Reggie. Are you down there?”

Reggie pushed past him and hurried down. Kelly followed. But the basement was empty.

“What now?” Reggie asked.

“I'm going to ping Jessie.”

“Ping her? How?”

Kelly pulled aside a heap of laundry until he found the game console underneath. “With this.”

He explained as he set the machine up. Then he pulled Ashley's Link from his pocket, hiding it from him with his hand until it was fully inserted into the console. He didn't know how Reggie would react.

“You had a way to contact Jessie all this time and you're only just now using it?” Reggie exclaimed in disbelief. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Kelly growled in frustration. “I can't just ping her whenever I want to. It's dangerous.”

“I'm not following you, brah. Are they bugging you?”

“It's more complicated than that.” He flipped the power on. “Do you know how she got back on the island?”

Reggie shrugged. “She snuck aboard a ferry carrying the Live Players. She killed a guard and—”

“She didn't kill anyone! Arc is lying about that. No, I mean how she managed to even get access to Arc's ferry in the first place.”