S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (59 page)

 

We grab our packs and weapons and climb the guardrail. Behind us, the Undead swarm from under every conceivable object and out of every conceivable hole. Right behind me, Ashley lets out a scream before she clamps her hand over her mouth. But the scream continues to assault my ears.

“
Shut her up!
” Kelly whisper-shouts, gesturing frantically at Tanya.

“
Don't talk to her like that,” Jake yells back, but he hurries over and grabs Tanya's arm and pulls her close to his face to shush her. By the time I've made sure Micah has made it onto the road, IUs are starting to scramble over the guardrails on both sides. They're still moving slowly and clumsily, but we know from past experience that they limber up pretty quickly.

“
Go!” Micah pants, pushing me out of the way. Kelly pulls on my arm and says the same thing.

“
Micah needs help.”

We get him between us and, with an arm flung over each of our shoulders, we begun to run as fast as we can without tripping over each other's feet.

The first Undead hit the hot asphalt, their bare dead feet slapping like vacationers' sandals at the indoor mall in Hartford. Soon, the smell of burning flesh reaches my nose, stinking of singed hair and melted plastic. The corridor in front of us narrows. The corridor behind has already closed.

Tanya is out in front, zigging and zagging like a pinball in one of the old arcade games in Reggie's basement as she tries to keep as far away from the zombies as she possibly can. She doesn't realize yet that her screaming is drawing even more of them to her.

“
She's going to get us all killed,” Kelly grunts.

“
It's not dying I'm worried about,” I answer. “It's coming back.”

Jake tries to catch up with her. He's a good runner, swift and almost tireless. I remember how fast he was back in Long Island City, when he and Micah and I raced to get back to the tunnel. But the second encounter with the failsafe and the trauma of the past several days has noticeably affected him. He stumbles, yelling at Tanya to keep quiet, unaware that his own shouts are only making matters worse. Finally he manages to get a hand on her shoulder. Tanya shrieks so loudly that every zombie within a three mile radius must now be zeroing in on us. Jake tries to hold on to her, but she crumples to the hot pavement, wrapping herself up in her arms, protecting her head.

“
Get up!” he shouts, tugging on her. “Get up!” He grabs an arm and yanks her up. Her feet leave the ground. By then Reggie and Ash have reached them. Without slowing, Reggie reaches over and grabs Tanya's other arm. Her head snaps around and she nearly flies out of her shoes. Reggie keeps running, Ash in one hand, Tanya in the other and Jake dragging along behind. He's always had more strength than he deserves to have, but right now I'm glad for it.

“
Look out!” Kelly yells, as an arm clad in a flannel sleeve drops in front of my face. My first thought is,
Who wears flannel in ninety-degree weather?

My second thought is a bit more practical. It comes to me in my hapkido master's voice:
Use your enemy's strength against them.

I grab the arm at the wrist, even as it rakes down my chest and give it a twist, all without breaking stride. The zombie falls and I have to skip to avoid stepping on it and falling. There's a sickening crunch as the IU's head hits the pavement behind us.

“
That was close.”

“
Just keep running,” I grunt. The wrist I'd sprained a few days before now begins to throb again.

I look over at Micah to see how he's doing. He's pale as a ghost and his face is scrunched up in pain. I catch Kelly's eye. He tightens his jaw but doesn't say anything. At this rate, Micah's not going to last very long, and neither are we. I bow my head and force myself to push onward.

After another couple hundred yards, the IUs begin to thin out. Thankfully, both Tanya and Jake have stopped screaming. But the reason the zoms are falling back is that we're coming to an incline in the road and the berm on either side is growing steeper, the weeds thicker, harder to push through. A mixed blessing. We'll have to climb the grade, too.

I look over again and notice that Kelly's limping has grown worse. His lurching is making it harder to carry Micah. “How are you doing?”

“
Don't talk.”

The fire in my side is burning hotter and breathing is becoming a lesson is pain management. My throat feels like someone shoved a hot poker into it.

“
Don't know…” Micah pants, “…how much farther…”

“
I said don't talk.”

Then we start on the incline.

The others have already reached the top and are beginning to disappear over the other side. I grit my teeth and hope they don't come back. It would mean there's no escape in that direction.

We've opened up the gap between us and the zombies, so we slow to a brisk walk. It feels like heaven. “Fucking Reggie,” Kelly says, his voice cracking. “Couldn't…shut up.”

We trudge up the grade, the next step more painful than the last. My legs feel like lead. I'm dripping in sweat, but it doesn't evaporate and cool me down. It's just too humid. My skin burns and my head wants to explode. Finally we reach the top and get our first glimpse of the other side. The hill has helped slow the IUs chasing us but also blocked the noise we've made. There's not an IU in sight down there. They're there, though, we know they are.

Looking off to the side, I see a half dozen Undead piling up against the eight-foot chain link fence guarding the Cross Island Expressway. It won't hold for very long, but it will hold long enough for us to get away. Only the ones on the road behind us are an immediate threat.

The rest of the gang are a good fifty feet ahead of us. They've stopped and are now standing and watching. Reggie sees us and begins to jog back. Jake follows. When they reach us, they take Micah. Kelly and I glance back one last time. The zoms marching up the road have quickened their pace, but the incline seems to have confused them. They have no sense of balance. They lean too far back and tumble over before stubbornly getting back up and trying again.

Kelly starts laughing. “I've never seen anything…” He rests his hands on his knees and wheezes. I can't help it and start laughing, too. Jake and Reggie look at us like we're crazy, which only makes us laugh all the harder.

We stand there and watch for a few more minutes, until it seems the Undead are getting the knack of walking up a slope. Several seem to have given up trying and have resorted to crawling up on their hands and knees. All this reminds us that they'll never stop coming, not until they've lost sight and sound of us. And maybe smell. It immediately sobers us up.

We turn and begin the painful march across the overpass and down the other side. I can feel my muscles already beginning to stiffen up. My feet are swollen inside these new shoes and it feels like I've got a half dozen blisters.

Kelly points off to the right where the faded sign for a Burger King rises out of the trees about a quarter mile down the road. “That might be a good place to take a rest. If we can get there without being seen. Or making noise.” He looks at Jake and Tanya when he says this, but it's Ashley who's face burns with shame. She was the first to scream back there. Of course, it was Reggie's shouting that brought them all out in the first place.

“
I doubt the drive-thru is open.”

Kelly rolls his eyes. “Not the Burger King. I was talking about that place just past it.”

“
Sporting goods?”

He nods. “They're bound to have clothes and shoes and maybe even weapons, better than what we've got, anyway. Plus survival food. And if we can get inside without making any noise, maybe we can catch a few minutes rest.”

“
With Arc on our heels?” Ashley asks.

Kelly grins. “They'll first have to make it through the IUs on the highway.”

“
Kelly's right,” I say, nodding. “We need a rest, even if it's for a short while. Micah's hurting.” I glance down at Kelly's leg. The outside of his left pant leg is soaked through. “Won't do us any good to get away if we just end up running ourselves to death.”

“
Speaking of Arc,” Jake says, stopping and looking around. “Where's Stephen?”

 

Kelly starts running back up
toward the crest of the overpass. I take off after him, grabbing his arm when I catch him. His skin is slick with sweat and slips through my grip.

“
He's gone,” I say. “Kelly, he's gone! Leave it.”

He makes a strangled sound in his throat, his eyes never leaving the top of the hill.

“
Even if he managed to escape the IUs, Kel, why would he stay with us?”

He turns to me. “Because he needs us.”

“
We need him, not the other way around.”

“
Out here, we're his best chance of survival. He won't last very long by himself.”

I shake my head. “You're thinking like
you
, not him. It won't take him long to get back to LaGuardia. Back to his people.”

Kelly pants, his gaze passing from me to the others to the hill. Finally he shakes his head.

“
Let's go.”

“
Kel—”

“
I said, let's go. We have to keep going.”

He reaches the others but doesn't stop. They stare at his back, just like me.

“
What'll we do now?” Ash asks in a low voice. “We don't know where we're going.”

I watch Kelly limp away. “I think he does.” And I step away to follow, but Reggie grabs my arm and pulls me back.

“
What do you mean?” he asks. “How could he know?” I yank, but he holds on tight. He won't let go. “This is bullshit, Jess. Tell us.”

I keep pulling. “Let's just get down there and out of the sun, okay?”

He frowns, his eyes studying mine for a moment before he loosens his grip. I wait for him to completely let go before stepping away.

“
Damn it, Jessie!”

“
I don't like this,” Jake mumbles to Reggie. “Since coming back it's been all about her and Kelly. They think they're better than the rest of us and can boss us around. Just because they're not stuck here like we are.”

Rage burns inside of me at these words, but I resist the urge to give in to it.

“
Get away from me, Pukeboy,” Reggie mutters.

“
I'm just say—”

“
Just shut the hell up. Okay, Jake?”

“
Hey, you were the one shooting your mouth off back there. You're the one that caused everything to go to hell in the first place!”

I hear feet scuffle behind me, but before I can turn, Ashley intervenes. “Reggie! Please, come on. It's not worth it.”

I glance back one last time and confirm everyone's following and that the Undead haven't breached the top of the highway.

Kelly's limp is noticeably more pronounced. He's slowed a lot. It doesn't take us long to catch up with him. Ashley asks him what happened, but he just shakes his head. His face is white, the tendons in his neck standing out with the strain of putting one foot in front of the other. Beads of sweat pour down his cheeks. I worry about him becoming dehydrated.

“
Cut his leg when he jumped off the tram,” I whisper.

Ashley shoots me a worried look, but I give my head a quick shake. It's not worth talking about right now. We need to get inside, out of the sun. We need to rest and drink. We need to bandage that wound.

“
Serves him right,” Jake mumbles. I turn to say something, but I catch Tanya giving him a dirty look. Only then does he shut up.

I have mixed feelings about the way Jake has glommed onto Tanya. It's a relief because it takes some of the pressure off of the rest of us. Jake's feelings for me and his animosity for Kelly are totally screwing with us all. Half the time it's like he wants to protect me, but the other half he can't stand the sight of me. I don't know if ignoring him is making things worse, or if trying to talk to him will help. All I know is that he needs to stop acting so emotional. He'll just end up making someone to do something that we'll all regret.

Reggie moves up parallel with Kelly. I see him point off to the side where there's a well-worn animal trail off the shoulder of the road and down to the parking lot for the sports store. The trail is a straight shot, but its narrow and thick brush lines both sides, perfect hiding places for IUs. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kelly shaking his head.

We keep walking, heading for what appears to be an exit at the junction with the Douglaston Parkway, but when we get there, there is no off-ramp. We either have to go further or backtrack.

We gather in the shade of the overpass to discuss this. The Douglaston curves over our heads and back around to the right, leading straight to the sporting goods store. About twenty feet of loose brush separates us from it here, plus a chain link fence.

“
Well?”

“
I say we go back and try that path,” Reggie says.

Ashley shakes her head. “I didn't like the looks of it.”

Reggie sighs, but nods in agreement.

“
We could try going through here,” Kelly says. He bends down to look beneath the brush. “It looks clear.”