S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus Page 16

  A new alarm rises up inside of me: the current has shifted.

  Jake realizes this too. He yanks the light away and swings it back up at Reggie and Kelly. They’ve got a corner of what looks like a box spring mattress and are pulling at it, trying to pry it loose. Jake makes an urgent noise with his throat, but we’re too far away for them to hear it. I begin to kick my way up toward them.

  I reach Ash just as I start hearing a soft plinking noise below us. I look down and see Jake urgently banging the handle of his knife on the flashlight, trying to alert the others. Ashley hears it and turns, inadvertently shifting the light in Micah’s hands away from Kelly and Reg.

  Just then there’s a low grinding noise, massive and ominous. I feel it in my bones, and I sense, rather than see or hear, the pile beginning to shift, the low grinding of several tons of material moving against itself, pushed forward by the strengthening current, unrelieved now that its only opening has been obstructed.

  Jake makes that urgent sound in his throat again, but Kel and Reg don’t hear. He swims past us and stabs them with his light. They keep working on pulling the mattress free.

  Now I see the first fingers of muddy water beginning to surge past them. I grab Ashley’s arm and pull her away.

  Her eyes narrow at me in confusion. She pulls back.

  A loud metallic moaning sound comes from the bottom of the pile. The bus lurches. Ash makes a sound in her throat. I gesture that the boys need to hurry.

  Jake reaches Kelly and pushes him away. They begin to wrestle with each other. Reggie turns and stares as if they’re crazy. His body stiffens. He watches them do their slow motion fight for a moment before he tries to separate them.

  Something shoots through the small opening. It wraps around Jake’s head. He tears it away and tries to see what it is, but it slips from his hand and disappears into the gloom. Kelly takes the opportunity to move away.

  I wave my arms, but they don’t see me. Jake grabs Reggie and points down, but Reggie can’t see what he’s pointing at; it’s too dark. Behind them, the mattress bulges out. Jake points again and waves his hands in a sweeping motion. Reggie shakes his head. Jake gives up and tries Kelly again.

  Behind them, the mattress twists. Suddenly, it shoots out of the gap, hitting Reggie in the back. A bubble of air escapes his mouth and his mask sinks away. For a moment he looks unconscious, but then his head whips around and his hands go to his throat.

  I dive downward into the darkness, not knowing where I’m going, only moving by instinct. I sweep my arms around until I feel something light brush against the back of my hand and I stab at it until my fingers wrap around the tube connecting the cartridge to Reggie’s mask. It seems like a miracle, but I’ll take it. I turn and kick my way up.

  Reggie is still struggling. He’s drifting away toward the darkness, but nobody else sees him. Kel and Micah are moving to the opening. They see that it’s clear again. Jake swims up to them, still gesturing.

  A series of thumps comes to us from all around. They echo dully and ponderously, sounding like they’re coming from the other side of the heap. A loud scrape follows. Everyone stops what they’re doing to look around. Everyone but me and Reggie.

  I swim desperately toward the gloom, towards Reggie’s fading ghostly shape. I get one last glimpse of his eyes just before he disappears: they’re wild and bulging behind his goggles.

  I hear the sudden release of air and I know Reggie’s using the air in his goggles. There’s another release. Then a third. How many more before it’s empty?

  I need to find him.

  Kelly’s suddenly there, pulling me back toward the opening. He spins me around. I see Micah hanging onto the edge of the metal cage, kicking against the current, casting his light inside to see if it’s clear all the way through. The mud swirls through in thick clouds. But the current looks too strong. Even if it’s wide enough for us to swim through, how can we?

  I push Kelly away and turn. I kick into the darkness.

  Then the light turns toward us. I see Reggie up ahead, his hands clasped over his mouth, his cheeks bulging. His eyes lock on me, and the mask in my hand. He kicks weakly, but he’s still drifting further away.

  I finally reach him. He clutches me desperately. Even starving of air, his grip is like steel. I thrust his mask into his face. He takes it and exhales explosively into the canister, then inhales. The canister wheezes from the force of his breathing. I fear he’ll burst the bag inside.

  In he breathes. Out. Repeating the cycle as I try to tow him back toward the heap. But it’s against the current. It’s like towing a boulder through quicksand.

  Reggie recovers enough to help me. Finally we reach the opening. Items are falling all around, tumbling down around us or being swept up in the rush of water through the gap.

  Kelly’s got his Link out. He flashes the screen at us:

  <<2 DANGERUS>>

  He points back the way we came.

  Ashley shakes her head. She grabs for Kelly’s arm and misses, tries again, grabs his ankle. I can see her shaking her head vehemently at him and pointing in the other direction. There’s no way she’s going back to Long Island.

  I feel Reggie push against me. He’s still shaking, but stronger than he was even just a moment before. His recovery is amazingly quick. He grabs the edge of the metal cage and pulls himself into the opening.

  The urgency is clear in Kelly’s eyes, but Ashley takes the opportunity to jockey her way into the gap. The current pushes her back and she somersaults. But then a hand shoots through the opening and grabs her, turning her around. The gap shifts; the cage begins to crumple.

  Micah grabs me and shoves me toward the opening. Then Kelly follows me. I pass Reggie inside, wedged in a tiny recess. He helps us through. Just in front of me, I see Ashley’s flippers disappearing out the other side.

  Something flutters past my face. Then something else drags across my arm, scratching me. I kick and strain and grab onto anything that’ll keep me from sliding back. I’m acting on adrenaline. We all are. There’s nothing else left.

  I push and pull and kick. Then I shoot through the opening and find calmer water. Ash returns with a pole. She pokes it through. Kelly grabs it and pulls himself out.

  There’s a loud rumble and everything shifts several feet. Ashley loses her air and lets go of the pole. I take her place while she recovers.

  Just as the entire debris pile shudders, Micah emerges. There’s a loud crack and a rumble and the cage collapses upon itself. Micah’s flashlight gets ripped from his hand. It tumbles away, then winks out. Complete darkness descends over us.

  Someone grabs me. A Link screen glows, showing me Kelly’s face. He pulls me clear of the pile.

  Jake! my mind screams. He never made it through.

  Kelly points. I catch a glimpse of Ash holding her Link before her, the mask now back in her mouth: she’s trying to put her goggles on. Micah’s helping her.

  I don’t see Reggie or Jake.

  Then Reggie appears in the faint glow of Ash’s Link. We join them, clustering close together.

  << JK?>>

  We all shake our heads.

  Reggie types:

  <>

  Kelly shakes his head. He points at the pile and begins to swim toward it. But then he stops and turns. He pushes his mouthpiece deeper in and sucks. Panic rises in his eyes.

  I can also feel it. I don’t know if it’s just because Reggie mentioned the canisters failing or if it’s actually happening, but I’m suddenly feeling light-headed, just like I did on the way over. There’s a dull pressure behind my eyes and I fight the urge to breath deeper and faster. How many more breaths do I have left?

  I snatch Ash’s Link and quickly scroll through it to find Jake’s contact. Pictures of people flash by, some I recognize, others I don’t. One goes by so fast that it doesn’t register at first, someone I know. Someone Ash shouldn’t.

  Then there’s Jake’s image. I ping him.
r />   There’s no response.

  Micah grabs Ash’s hand and pulls her, but I won’t let him. I try Jake’s Link a second time.

  Still no response.

  Now we have no choice. We’ll all die if we stay. Even if we leave now, we might not make it.

  Then Ash’s Link lights up.

  <>

  Micah shakes his head. There’s no way through the dam. Jake’s on the other side, but he can’t reach us. And we can’t reach him.

  Ash crumbles, but Reggie grabs her arm, shakes her, points frantically. We need to go!

  We form a chain again. I take one last look back, hoping for something, some sign that Jake has found a way through. I think I see a flash of light. I stare for a moment, but there’s nothing but darkness.

  We swim on in total darkness. I can’t know if I’m crying because my tears just melt into the filthy, salty water. And yet I do know. I’m crying because we’ve left Jake behind.

  And yet I swim on.

  One by one, our cartridges fail. We share the rest between us until all we have left is the one unused one that Micah still had on his belt. And still we haven’t reached the opening.

  We each have to be wondering, with the five of us using it, will it last?

  Reggie guides us with his hand on the wall of the tunnel. We pass the one mask between us: front to back to front again.

  And then, just as it begins to fail, the darkness in the tunnel lightens just a tiny bit. I’m half delirious by then, starved of oxygen, exhausted, grieving. We all are. But it’s not the light of the tunnel opening we see, it’s the light from Ash’s Link receiving one final message:

  <>

  We each see it, but we don’t stop to think about it. Survival is paramount—our survival. It’s the one thought we all share and can’t argue about.

  But now a second thought settles in, a doubt, waiting for the first moment when it can capture our full attention: How can we just leave Jake behind? How could we live knowing we did?

  We can’t.

  We have to go back.

  ‡ ‡

  [END OF EPISODE ONE]

  Episode 2

  Failsafe

  PART ONE

  There Are No Guarantees In Life

  Chapter 1

  “No Jessie.”

  It’s the first thing out of Kelly’s mouth, the moment he breaks the surface on the Manhattan side of the tunnel and joins the rest of us already there. As in: No, Jessie. We’re not going back.

  Here I am gasping, coughing, choking, holding onto anything my fingers can wrap around. They feel like rubber. The water clutches at me like the hard, ropy hands of the Undead. And he’s telling me no? The last thing I need is for someone—anyone—to tell me what I can or can’t do.

  He takes in a huge, rattling breath—it sounds so like his brother Kyle during one of his fevers, wet and drowning, sounding of death. “Don’t even…think about it, Jess.”

  How can he be so selfish after we’ve just escaped with our lives? Already he’s trying to protect me. Already he’s trying to keep me from saying out loud what is painfully obvious to us all. What we’ve done. What we’re guilty of doing. What we will do if we don’t go back.

  But his attempts to prevent that from happening only make it that much more wrong. We have to go back. We have no choice.

  I knew Kelly had fallen behind in that last fifty or hundred feet. Once the tunnel opening came into view, we split up from one another, dropping any last pretext of sticking together, no longer tethered to each other by our last remaining functioning rebreather cartridge. It was dying anyway, we knew it. We knew we were dying, too. Until we saw the opening.

  Each of us racing to get to the surface.

  None of us caring who was first or last.

  Just wanting to get there.

  Thinking about nothing but that precious air, so close and yet just out of reach.

  Except for Kelly. How could he even think about me like that? Doesn’t he even realize how close he came to drowning down there?

  Of course he does. That’s why he’s telling me no.

  I wonder, would they have dragged our bodies out with a pole like they do the zombies that drift through the tunnel from LI? Would they have unceremoniously separated our heads from our bodies—the only guaranteed way to stop the Undead—thinking we were one of them? Would they have then wrapped us up in plastic sheeting and sent us to the incinerator?

  “It’s out…of our hands now,” Kelly pants.

  I can see him treading water right in front of me. I can hear him pleading, and somewhere deep inside my mind I know what he’s saying. But it doesn’t register, not right away.

  Until it finally does—not what he’s saying, but his denial of what we did and why I know we have to go back despite the hell we just went through. We left Jake behind to die.

  No. It’s worse than leaving him behind to die: we left him to become one of the Infected Undead himself.

  What if it was me?

  “We have to, Kelly,” I say, choking.

  While there’s still time. While there’s still a chance to save him. He doesn’t deserve to die.

  Ashley’s crying now. Quietly. Hiding it. Her back’s turned. Even now, after all we’ve been through, she can’t let anyone know she’s anything but tough as nails. She’s so freaking concerned with making sure we don’t see her break down. I wish I could cry, but I can’t. Maybe it’s the shock, maybe disbelief. Maybe it’s also joy. I’m glad to be alive.

  Kelly turns to the others. He bobs in the water without holding onto anything, and he pleads for them to agree with him. But Reggie’s eyes are still glassy and his face is slack with shock. He’s staring at the sky, his mouth open like he’s a little bird and he’s trying to eat all the air out of the sky. Micah just looks…

  I can’t really tell. The look on his face seems almost angry. I’ve never seen him look like that before.

  Ashley gives an audible sob and snoggers. She makes a nervous, choking giggle. The unexpected sound seems to wake us all up.

  “Look, guys,” Micah quietly says. “Let’s just… Let’s focus on getting out of the water first—getting out of here. We don’t know when that cop will be coming around again. If he sees us, it won’t matter what we decide to do later. There won’t be any going anywhere except straight to a Life Service hearing.”

  Micah’s right. The cop who patrols this area would know we’d lied to him the last time we ran into him. He’d know we weren’t working on some lame school project or senior year community service thing. Not that he’d believed us when we told him that before. You could see it in his eyes: he believed we were just a bunch of hormone-crazed teenagers looking for a good place to make out.

  One glance at our wetsuits and gear and he’d know we weren’t there for sex. Well, maybe the kinkiest kind.

  How many years would they add to our Life Service Commitment for breaking into a Forbidden Zone? Five years? Ten? How many more would they tack on once they figured out we’d not only gone to LI but then left one of us there, most likely to die? Another twenty?

  Thirty years off the top of our life expectancies. That would make us middle aged already.

  “This way,” Reggie says, guiding us to the closest wall.

  The moment Ashley’s on solid ground, she falls to her knees and starts wiping away the water dripping off our bodies and onto the walkway. “Have to dry it,” she says. “Have to hide it.” She’s becoming delirious. But her efforts only end up making a bigger mess.

  “We can’t worry about that right now,” Micah quietly tells her. He gently pulls her to her feet and urges her up the walkway toward the parking garage where his car and Jake’s van are parked. He turns one last time to Kelly and says, “We’ll talk about it once we’re back home and we’ve had a chance to clear our heads a little.”

  But Kelly doesn’t wait. As soon as we’re out of sight of the tunnel, he turns to me and says, “I kno
w what you’re thinking, Jess. The answer’s still no. Leave it to the officials.”

  “Kel’s right,” Reggie says as he shrugs his way out of his wetsuit. It surprises me a little to hear him agreeing with Kelly. They rarely ever agree on anything, and even when they do, Reggie usually ends up arguing the other side, just to be difficult.

  A look of surprise and distrust flashes across Kelly’s face. He still blames Reggie for everything that’s happened. He still thinks Reggie pushed him over the railing here days before. It was how we ended up knowing the tunnel was still open, even after all these years after LI was declared off-limits. Would any of this have happened otherwise—the trip, losing Jake—if we hadn’t found that out?

  Maybe.

  I don’t know what to believe anymore. I believe Kelly thinks he was pushed, but I can’t picture Reggie doing something like that. He’s big and strong and certainly capable, but he’s more of a talker than a doer.

  I make my way over to Ashley. She’s still just sitting there. I reach over and grab her Link out of her hand and wake the screen. Jake’s last message is still there. I hold it up for the others to see. “He was still alive after the passage collapsed. He said he was going back. He made it. I just know it.”

  “You don’t know,” Reggie says. The fear is clear in his eyes. He just doesn’t want to admit he’s chickenshit. He’s the largest of our group, the strongest, and yet he’s like a little kid sometimes. I almost tell him so, but Micah speaks first.

  “That’s why we have to go back,” he says.

  “Thank you.” I hand the Link back to Ash.

  “And then what?” Kelly asks. He angrily swipes his wet hair out of his face. “The place is swarming with zombies. And, okay, let’s assume Jake’s cartridge lasted him the whole way back—I doubt it, but let’s just say it did—how’s he going to get out of the water? You saw how many there were. They’d surround him in seconds. He’ll be attacked.” He shakes his head. “And so would we. No, Jake’s…”