S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus Read Free Page A

didn’t want to start anything—but I hoped it was enough that he’d not take what I was about to say the wrong way.
    â€œ If Reggie says he can come up with a plan, then… Well, I’m in, too.”
    Kelly leaned away from me like I was contagious.
    Reggie gave a howl of triumph. “See? Didn’t I tell you it was a good idea?”
    â€  † †
    That was weeks ago now. How many exactly, I don’t know. I’ve lost count of the days.
    Reggie is leaning on me, pushing all of his weight onto the bandage pressed at my side as if he’s afraid my guts are going to come spilling out at any moment. Now he doesn’t look so sure of himself.
    â€œ I knew this was bad,” he growls. “Right from the start I knew we shouldn’t have come here. That’s what I tried to tell you guys.”
    I look up at Kelly standing outside the glass door looking in—what’s left of him, anyway—and I see now that he was right. He was right all along. I just wish he’d tried harder to stop us.
    I don’t blame either of them, though. I don’t blame anyone. Not myself, not even the asshole who first planted the idea in Reggie’s brain. We all had our own private reason for coming. That’s what really drove us to do it. But would we have come if we knew then what we know now? Would we still have agreed to try?
    I don’t know. Maybe not.
    Then again, maybe.
    As I lie here dying, lost somewhere in the Wastes with zombies closing in, wanting nothing more than to feed on those of us still alive, the truth finally hits home: it never really mattered what we wanted or didn’t want. Arc Entertainment had this all planned from the very beginning. They wanted us in The Game . That’s why it was so easy for us to break in.
    And why getting out has been such a killer.
    I slowly reach behind my back, to the cold metal of the gun tucked into my waistband. I’ve got one bullet left. Just one. I know it sounds cliché, but I’ve been saving it for just such a moment.
    My fingers wrap around the grip; they find the safety and flick it off. They touch the curve of the trigger, test its resistance. Reggie sees the wince on my face as I pull it free, but he thinks it’s just the infection taking hold. He doesn’t yet see the gun. All he knows is that the disease is spreading inside of me. He knows the agony I’ll soon be going through. He knows the monster I’m about to become.
    I cough. “Got any antivenin?” I ask, trying for humor.
    He smiles a wistful smile.
    I draw the gun out and hold it up. They all see it at the same moment, though it doesn’t register with any of them right away what I’m going to do with it. Then, all at once, they know, and they start yelling for me not to do it.
    But I don’t hear them. All I can hear as I aim and pull the trigger is Kelly—my poor, dear, lost Kelly—whispering inside my head how much he loves me.
    I guess he was a better player than I realized.
    â€¡

PART ONE
The Plan. Or Rather the Pathetic Lack of One.

Chapter 1
    Two days before breaking in.
    Thursday mornings during the summer are set aside for free sparring at the dojang. I’ve been studying hapkido since I was nine and recently passed my 1st gup black belt. What prompted my older brother Eric to push me into martial arts was the second outbreak, the one that happened down in DC. He thought a little self-defense training might come in handy.
    The problem with that kind of thinking is that nobody believes a bunch of fancy kicks and holds is any kind of defense against the Infected Undead. And especially not against those with implants. I’d seen the Omegaman propaganda videos in school and knew the damage they could do to a person when fully under the control of a functioning L.I.N.C. implant. But since the government only just started making them mandatory about ten years ago, there are still tons of