S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (3 page)

He waved a screening device at the back of her neck, then peered myopically at what it said. “Ah,
Socialization of Implanted Reanimates
with Master Bledsoe.” His smile made her shiver. “A truly fascinating elective. Not very popular among the students, I'm afraid.”

Jessie didn't answer. She didn't tell him that Master Bledsoe was creepy, or that she hadn't chosen her electives this semester, since she'd missed the first couple weeks of school. She'd been a little busy trying to stay alive.

“Room one-fifteen is down the hall in the other direction,” he told her. He seemed oblivious to the fact that the smile on his face had grown stale. “Hurry off now. You don't want to be late for Bledsoe's lecture. He reports
all
tardies. And I happen to know that you don't want any trouble right now.”

She frowned at him, wondering what he meant by that, but he wiggled his fingers at her. “Hurry now.”

She sighed and turned toward room one-fifteen. She could feel his eyes on her back the whole way.

‡ ‡ ‡

“Damn it, Reggie! Move it!” Kelly shouted. “Come on! Wake up!”

Reggie gritted his teeth. “Will you shut the hell up!”

“Watch out behind you!”

“I got it, damn it! Just stay out of my way.”

Reggie hopped off the zombie he'd just killed with a crushing blow to the back of the head. A second one was coming in fast, reaching out to grab him. Reggie ducked, and the flayed hand, not much more than bones and tendons, passed in a blur before his eyes. He reacted instinctively, sweeping the rusty steel pipe he was holding in his right hand in a broad arc. But he missed, and the sharpened stump of a finger bone raked the air an inch from his nose.

“Shit!” He reached reflexively to his cheek and repeated the curse. “It fucking got me!”

“Don't worry about that!”

The zombie took advantage of the distraction and rammed into him. Reggie lost his grip on the pipe, and it went skittering over the uneven pavement, coming to a stop at a clump of weeds breaking through a crack in the middle of the highway.

“Move!” Kelly growled.

Reggie started to scramble away, his heart slamming into his ribcage.

This wasn't your idea
, he reminded himself.
Kelly was the one who pushed you to come back.

“You know we've got unfinished business,” Kelly had reminded him, nearly a week ago now. And Reggie hadn't argued — hadn't
wanted
to argue — despite how obviously fucked up the idea was. He didn't want to think about any “unfinished business,” especially not the kind Kelly was talking about.

“We can't just pretend it didn't happen, Reg. Ash and Jake, they deserve better.”

“I can't do it, Kelly,” he'd said, close to tears.

How screwed up is that?

Never in a million years did he ever think he'd break down in front of Kelly.

But Kelly had taken him by the shoulders, looked straight into his eyes, and said, “It'll be different this time. I promise.”

Yet somehow the truth felt like a lie. It wasn't any different. Not really.

The Player stepped forward, moving faster than a zombie should be able to. It slammed its foot down, trapping Reggie beneath it.

“Get the hell up!” Kelly shouted.

“Would if I could, brah!” Reggie panted. Though he knew it was just his imagination, Reggie thought his protests seemed to antagonize his assailant further. It roared and thrust its bony hands at him, grabbing a handful of hair. Reggie felt his feet go out from underneath, and he was momentarily stunned and disoriented at the strange sensation of falling.

“Focus, Reggie!”

A crowd of Infected Undead had begun to gather, lured from their hiding places by the noise. The IUs were slower, less coordinated than the Players— at least until they got into a feeding frenzy. Then there was almost nothing that would stop them.

Dark memories of the room inside Jayne's Hill, the Undead piling against the door. Watching the wall begin to cave beneath their mass.

He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to remember. It just brought back terrible memories, made the nightmares he'd been having even worse. Why couldn't they have just stayed away in the first place?

Why the hell did you come back?

The answer to the second question was easy, at least according to Kelly. They needed to find Ashley and Jake.

And then what? What will you do when you find her? She's not the same. She'll never be the same.

Quiet her. That's what he'd do.

But did he have it in him to break her neck?

The Player stumbled backward, pulling away from him. There was a clump of hair in its bony fist. Reggie let out a yell of fury, but it swiped up with its other hand and managed to hook an iron finger into a piece of loose clothing. Reggie felt himself being jerked forward. The Player opened its mouth and let out another moan.

It's laughing!

Now it lifted. Reggie was helpless, unable to grab anything, unable to run.

You're dead. Your first full day back and already you're dead!

He started to fall. The ground rose upward at him with dizzying speed.

But the Player wasn't dropping him. It hadn't thrown him down onto the hot asphalt. Instead, it spun him around, as if to stare into his eyes, as if curious what they might hold within.

Infuriated, Reggie grabbed the Player's tattered shirt and thrust his head forward. There was a loud
CRACK!
The force of the collision rocked the Player backward. It staggered and began to fall over its own feet. Yet, it still wouldn't let go; Reggie felt himself being pulled on top of it, felt himself falling.

The back of the Player's head collided with the unyielding road with such force that it bounced right back up.

Everything went white.

He heard Kelly, his voice sounding far away. “Get up, Reg!” Felt an arm on his shoulder, pulling.

Reggie thrust his arms forward to push away. “I can't . . . see,” he moaned. On his feet, staggering, arms held out. If this were
Zpocalypto
, he was sure Kelly would be laughing at him by now. But it wasn't, and Kelly wasn't laughing.

Reggie's vision cleared. He looked around him, spinning on his heels, ready for the attack. But the Player remained splayed out on the road and didn't move. One arm was wrenched to the side, its fingers still twitching. The other hand hovered in the air for a moment before dropping with a thud to the pavement.

Reggie started to laugh. He couldn't help it. He'd never been so scared in his life and yet here he was laughing like a maniac. The Player was finally dead. Again. For good.

“There's another forty thousand dollars we'll never see,” he grunted.

He realized that the Undead clawing at the fence were moaning now.

Something's got them riled up.

But he ignored them and gave the Player beneath him a vicious kick. The head jerked to the side. He could hear Kelly telling him to stop, but he couldn't control himself. He kicked it again. Then twice more.

I shouldn't have come back. I SHOULD NOT HAVE COME BACK!

Bones snapped, skin tore. The thing was dead, but he wanted to kill it again and again and again.

He raised his foot and brought the heel down onto the zombie's face. The skull crumbled and burst open, letting out a small puff of grayish dust. What remained of the beast's brain that hadn't desiccated away began to ooze out onto the baking pavement.

“This is not what I signed up for!” he screamed. He swiped a fist over his runny nose. Sweat poured down his face. “God damn it sonofabitch assholes!”

Kelly grabbed his shoulder.

“Why can't you just leave us alone? All I want to do is—”

“Reggie! You're going to have to freak out later.”

“Let go of me,” Reggie growled.

“There's more.”

“They're just IUs.”

“Not them,” Kelly said, his voice low. He spun Reggie to the right. “I'm talking about
them
.”

“Where? I don't see—”

But then he did, a Player standing next to an abandoned car not twenty feet away. Reggie stepped back and nearly stumbled on the body.

“Damn it.” He pushed Kelly away and lowered into a crouch. The new Player stepped away from the car and began to advance. “Was it there the whole time?”

“I don't know. I didn't see it.”

“You're supposed to be keeping watch,” Reggie hissed.

“I am keeping watch!” Kelly complained. “You almost clocked me back there with your elbow. You need to stop flailing around like that. It's just wasted energy.”

“
It's just wasted energy
,” Reggie parroted.

“I'm trying to help.”

“Then stay out of the way!”

Reggie slid his feet backward and his shoes made a soft shushing sound on the carpet of his garage. The Player he was controlling mimicked the movement by shuffling backward over the surface of the cracked road. When he sensed the resistance of the dead Player's body against his heels, he stopped. Carefully, he stepped backwards over empty air. The Player did the same, placing the corpse between it and the new arrival.

“I'm just saying,” Kelly whined, as he slumped onto the couch, “I can't keep looking out when you're flinging yourself around like that.”

“Well, would you rather take over then? I'll be happy to switch places with you.”

“It'll take too long to switch out our Links,” Kelly said.

“Excuses,” Reggie growled. But, inwardly, he was almost glad Kelly didn't want to take his turn.

Two more zombies appeared behind the other. Reggie knew immediately that they were also Players. They moved too purposefully to be anything but Operator-controlled.

The implanted Undead approached him cautiously, spreading out in a coordinated fashion.

“Isn't team play against the rules?” Reggie hissed.

“Since when do the rules matter anymore?” Kelly replied.

Reggie raised his hand threateningly at them, but his Player's hand was empty. He'd forgotten he'd dropped the pipe. “I need a weapon.”

“Just use your hands like everyone else does.”

“Everyone else does it because of the points. I say screw the points, brah. Where's that pipe?”

The three newcomers spread out, covering his flanks. Reggie took another step back. He needed to keep them in his field of vision. “Kelly?” he asked. “I need some advice. Quick!”

“Just don't die,” Kelly replied, from somewhere to Reggie's right. “That's the only Player we've got.”

‡ ‡ ‡

Jessie lifted her head off the toilet seat and stifled a groan as yet another wave of nausea rose from the pit of her stomach. Burning fingers of vomit clawed into her throat, stung her nose and eyes. A bilious string of spittle dangled from her chin; she wiped it away and tried not to think about the cramps in her stomach, that they might be the infection returning despite her immunity. Her eyes came to rest on the shit-colored rust along the bottom edge of the stall's metal partition; it was as good as anything to focus on.

On the floor below her was the hall pass her teacher had given her. The corner of it was soggy. She doubted he'd want it back.

Breathe.

Sweat trickled down her neck. She closed her eyes, tried to picture herself someplace cooler.

The bathroom door opened.

Peering through the slits beneath her eyelids, Jessie watched a pair of red sneakers step in. Nikes. Only a handful of girls in the school could afford such expensive shoes, and she wasn't particularly fond of any of them. This pair especially, since they belonged to—

Ashley had a pair just like them, right after we came back the first time, except those had been green.

—Siennah Davenport. Red shoes were the girl's trademark. She didn't like it if anyone else wore the same color.

Jessie had had her share of run-ins with the girl. Like her, Siennah was a heavy gamer, except she didn't play
Zpocalypto
like the rest of them. No virtual zombies for this girl, oh no. She was an Operator, and apparently quite good at
The Game
, too, if her own claims were to be believed. It helped that the Davenports were filthy rich. Her dad, Gavin, was Greenwich's mayor, and the family could easily afford the million-dollar buy-in (and probably some back-alley virtual zeality lessons to boot).

It seemed that Siennah's favorite pastime at school was to regularly update everyone on her kill stats. It didn't take a math whiz to calculate she was making bank hand over fist.

And the rich get richer.

Jessie had watched more than her share of
Survivalist
over the years, the show highlighting the most exciting parts from
The Game
, but she'd never taken any particular interest in Siennah. She wouldn't be able to pick her Player out of a line up.

Siennah returned Jessie's apathy with antipathy. The feeling had little to do with Jessie's relative poverty. Most of Siennah's associates were just as poor as Jessie was. To people like the Davenports, sycophants who fed off the sloughed discards of the wealthy filled an important niche in society. They were the dust mites feeding on the dead skin cells shed by their hosts.

The true source of Siennah's hatred was her envy of Jessie's gaming skills. Everyone knew who the best
Zpocalypto
players were. It made little difference to Siennah that
Zpocalypto
wasn't real, that when you killed a zombie, you left behind a digital corpse instead of a real one. That a digital murder was worth nothing in real dollars. Those were irrelevant technicalities.

Jessie drew her feet in closer to her body and checked that the stall she occupied was locked. She couldn't remember pushing the latch across when she came in, but it was secured. She'd barely even made it in before the subsidized bilge they'd served in the lunchroom came gushing up her throat and into her mouth with such force that all she could do was open wide and hope for the best. By some trick of fluid dynamics and viscosity and gravity, most of the puke had maintained its integrity rather than aerosolizing. Most made it into the toilet, although the force of the splash had left wet runners on the tile wall behind. At the moment, it was slowly oozing its way toward the floor.