S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (71 page)

“
But Arc has it now,” I say, before realizing Arc wouldn't want to cure the disease either. The Undead are just too profitable, and not simply because of
The Game
and
Survivalist
and all the other crappy VR games they make to entertain those of us who can't afford to buy Players, but because of all the implants they sell to the government to control us once we die.

The very people who have the power, the means, and the ability to fix the worst disease in human history, simply aren't interested in doing so.

“
Did my father want to stop it?”

He coughs and a new spurt of blood trickles down the outside of his bandage. “Yes-s-s-s.”

Everything I've ever been told about my father is suddenly wrong. He wasn't some mad scientist working for the government, sacrificing his ideals. He wanted to stop what the government was doing. All those years of being teased about it and now I know the truth.

It makes me wonder what Eric knew. His relationship with our father was always something of a mystery to me.

“
How do you know all this?” I ask.

He nudges the empty cup lying on the floor. “Thirsty.”

I extend my hand to fill it, then jerk back expecting him to grab me. I already know he's a good actor. He's fooled us several times already. The act back in LaGuardia during our fight with Mabel had us all fooled. We'd thought he was infected. Only Jake had seen right through it. Jake had said Stephen was messing with our minds, and he was right.

Then, that last day, right before we tried to escape back through the tunnel using the tram. I'd gone in to question him for the last time. He'd pulled the deadman's switch, convincing me he was ready to kill himself. He'd gotten me to tell him about our plans, to get us to let him go. To take him with us.

But he just sits there without moving, his eyes closed, the air passing through his lips, rattling in his lungs. He's not acting now. He really is dying.

“
You're not just some prep nurse, are you?” I ask, adding some more of the whiskey to his cup and setting it on the floor where he can reach it. “Or some lab scientist working for Arc. Who are you?”

I wait for several minutes, watching his labored breathing, before repeating the question.

“
I'm—”

His face contorts and his body goes rigid.

“
I'm—”

He takes a final quaking breath. His eyes roll back in his head. Then he lets the air out in an explosive exhale and he sags to the floor.

 

I ping Micah
as soon as I'm sure Stephen's dead. I leave him tied up, just in case he reanimates. He won't.

“
Yeah, well, good riddance to him,” Micah says. “He was a pain in the ass. He deserved to die.”

“
Nobody deserves to die,” I mutter.

As bad as he was, I still feel sorry for him. And Tanya. Especially Tanya. There's been too much killing: Mabel; the man from Arc, who Mabel killed, though only because I killed her; and now these two.

Has it really only been four people? It seems like so many more.

You had to kill Mabel and Tanya twice. And all those IUs…

It has to stop.

“
Have you found a crane?” I ask.

“
Not yet. I'm starting to head back, though,” he tells me. Through the Link's viewfinder I can see several loops of rope over his shoulders and the darkening sky beyond.

“
Any IUs?”

“
One. Too far away to worry about.”

“
Better hurry then. It's getting dark.”

He looks away for a moment. “Oh, I also found another tablet computer.”

“
So? We found a laptop in the first house we came to here. It won't work. The battery'll be dead.”

Batteries are another piece of old tech we don't use anymore. Pretty much anything we use now is all powered by remote charging.

“
It works.”

“
Really? How is that even possible?”

“
Found it plugged into the wall at a house with solar panels.”

“
Honestly? I thought Chinese products were banned during The Embargo.”

“
Well, look who's been paying attention in History Class.” His Link jiggles as he walks, making my already-queasy stomach even more unsettled. “Must've been American-made. Anyway, this house still has the panels and they still work. A few houses do, it seems. And what's more, Jess, there's other stuff inside that still works.”

“
What else could we possibly need? A coffeemaker?”

“
That would be nice. But no. I'm thinking more like lights. It's going to be a long, dark night without them.”

He tells me where the house is and I tell him I'll meet him there in a few minutes.

I gather my pack and stop one last time to check on Stephen. He's still lying on the floor where I left him.

Before I leave, I grab a couple blankets from the beds and use them to cover the bodies. I don't know what'll happen to them, and I wish there was something more I could do or say, but I'm not a religious person and cremating them like we do in the real world is out of the question.

I find the other house less than five minutes later. A lamp shines dully above the door, covered in cobwebs and filled with the carcasses of thousands of flies. Dusk is quickly rolling in, turning the sky orange. I hurry over and try the knob and find it open, but I don't go inside. Instead, I sit in the far corner of the porch and watch through the openings in the railing for movement. Even with artificial lighting inside, there's no way I'm going into the house alone. I'll wait for Micah first.

He arrives just as the last bit of orange fades from the sky and dark blue turns to purple. He slips like a ghost across the yard and is at the door before I even realize it.

“Psst!”

He doesn't even pretend to be surprised. “Knew you were there the whole time, Jess. Come inside. It's safe.”

“
You checked?”

“
Earlier. There's nothing here,” he insists. He points at the Gameland wall a few hundred feet away. “I doubt there's even an Undead within a quarter mile of here.”

“
You said you saw one.”

“
Yeah, but it was far away.”

“
Besides, it only works on implants,” I add. “IUs don't have implants.”

He gives me a look. “I know you can feel it, too, Jess. Just not as much as the rest of us. Besides, it looks like Arc and their Players have decimated the IU population.”

“
Why?”

“
So, Arc can reclaim the entire island. They tried hunting. Remember? Now they use Players to do it and call it a game. Same outcome, less protest. They're clearing the island so they can rebuild and repopulate it with the living.”

I remember the plaque at the Citizen Registration office in the Carcher Building the day I went to get my replacement Link in Hartford. Edwin Carcher had made his fortune buying land devastated by flooding and then reselling it at a premium when the waters receded. It's the same principle. Arc would stand to make an ungodly amount of money selling the property here. After all, it's already built up. All the infrastructure is still intact.

“
Do you think we'll get any coming by because of the light?”

“
Like moths, you mean?” He laughs and shakes his head. “They won't.”

“
How do you know?”

He points. “The grass in the yard isn't trampled down. Now, are you coming?”

He opens the door and waits for me.

“
Oh, by the way, I found a crane. It's behind some fencing and there's a gate—chained up, of course and topped by barbed wire—but we should be able to get in pretty easily.”

“
Have you heard anything from the others?” I ask.

He nods, dropping the rope onto an overstuffed chair, raising a cloud of dust. “Just got a ping from Jake a few minutes ago. They're there. Now they're trying to figure out a way in.”

“
What's their plan?”

“
Digging underneath the fence.”

“
That'll take hours. And there's bound to be IUs.”

“
They're fine, Jess. Stop worrying. Jake's keeping watch.”

“
Figures. That lazy son-of-a—”

“
Now now. You're taking this too personally.”

“
Of course I'm taking this personally,” I grumble.

He laughs easily. Typical Micah—typical
old
Micah.

“
Did something happen to you out there?” I ask him.

He turns, perplexed.

“
It's just that you've been so somber and jumpy lately, ever since your…”

Breakdown?

“
I mean, you haven't been acting very much like yourself.”

He ignores me and instead unshoulders his backpack and opens it, drawing out a large, thin, white rectangular device. “This is a much nicer tablet than the other one. And it was made by the same company that as the music player in my car. See?”

“
Wonder what happened to them.”

“
Swallowed up by Arc during National Restructuring. Either that or they folded when the Cloud collapsed.”

“
So you've remembered how to code?”

He takes some wires and connects his Link to the tablet, then boots it up. “I haven't forgotten
everything
. I'm uploading Ashley's hacking algorithm onto the tablet. And the failsafe outputs.” He quickly navigates his way through the device, looking as if he's used one just like it all his life. It looks a lot more advanced than the interface on his old tablet, but for me it's still frustratingly two-dimensional.

“
Muscle memory,” he says, distractedly. “I find that if I just shut my brain off and let my fingers do the thinking, I can do things I can't remember knowing how to do.” He stops and a look of frustration comes over him. “But then I suddenly hit a brick wall and…nothing.”

I walk over to the window. It's completely dark outside now. “We should probably turn the lights off and go deeper into the house. I feel like we're being watched.”

He nods, but doesn't look up, even as he follows me through the rooms. We find a small laundry alcove with enough space for us to sit on the floor inside and close the accordion doors. Micah leans against a washer and keeps trying to reteach himself how to code. As I settle to the floor, finally letting my exhaustion sweep over me, my Link pings.

“
It's Ash,” I say. Micah nods and grunts.

“
We're through the fence,” she says.

“
That was fast.”

“
Yeah, well, Jake found a tree hanging over it. An easy climb. Good thing too, since the digging was starting to draw IUs out.”

I nudge Micah to let him know I told him so.

“
There doesn't seem to be very many. This place is out in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, this way there's no hole for the zombies to crawl through.” She looks away from her Link for a second. I can barely see her face in the gloom.

“
Hold on a sec, Ash,” I say. “I want to ask Micah something. He's on another tablet he found and is trying to teach himself how to code again.”

I turn to Micah and ask him if he's getting anything.

His face is red and he looks like he's about to burst. “Not really. I thought I had something, but then—”

Then his fingers start flying again. I don't interrupt him. I just watch, fascinated, as he bites his tongue between his teeth and concentrates on the screen with a manic intensity I haven't seen since he and Ash broke the code for
Zpocalypto
several weeks ago.

“
I really don't like this place,” Ashley whispers. “It gives me the creeps.”

Micah stops and groans. “It's gone again,” he says. He bangs his head on the surface of the washer.

“
Stop it,” I tell him. “You're going to hurt yourself. Just take a break.”

I turn back to the Link. Ash is still looking away. I ask her what's happening.

“
There's a bunch of buildings, three or four. They're not very big, but they each have at least a couple doors to get in and out. They're all locked, of course.”

I hear a faint banging noise in the background and ask what that is.

“
The boys are using the shovels to try and break in.”

“
Isn't that going to bring more IUs?”

Ash rolls her eyes. “Tell me about it. I keep telling…” Her face pivots completely out of the screen, leaving me staring at blackness.

“
Ash?”

“
Can you hear them?” she asks, returning.

Then I do, the unholy moans of the Undead, a chorus of dozens at least, their voices conjoined in a ululation of such utter desolation that it hollows me out inside.

“
I thought you said there weren't many.”

“
There are now. Can you see them?”

“
No. Everything's black. It's too dark.”

She turns the Link back to her face. “Looks like we're stuck here for the night. I just hope they don't break down the fence.”