S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus by Saul Tanpepper Read Free Book Online Page A

of a smile back, his way of forgiving me. He relaxes, resting a little more of his weight against me. For his reward, I give him a kiss on the cheek.
    â€œ Get a room, lovebirds,” Ashley groans. But of course, this just makes us laugh and want to do it some more.
    I’m practically sitting on Kelly’s lap when the road curves right and begins its gentle decline toward south Manhattan.
    â€œ Another checkpoint,” Micah announces. “I quickly plop back into my seat, wiping my lips with the back of my hand. I reach down and squeeze Kelly’s thigh and he nearly jumps through the roof of the car. I can’t tell if he’s so tense because of me or because we’re getting closer to LI.
    And we are close. I can smell the ocean. Water surrounds us all around, canals wending their way through and around the old skyscrapers, most of them abandoned now, crumbling. It’s our own version of Italy’s Venice. Of course, the real Venice is long gone now, buried under thirty feet of Mediterranean Sea years before I was even born. A diver’s paradise.
    Not that any of us’ll ever get to see it.
    We pull up at the checkpoint and this guard, after giving Micah’s car a good looking over, flatly tells us no access. “This is a commercial district,” he states.
    Ash points to me and says I have a permit. I flash him my Link with Eric’s permit on it and he inspects it for minute before handing it back. “Remember the curfew,” he says. We all nod dutifully and promise to be out of New York long before dusk.
    Despite all the restrictions and the hassles of the checkpoints, the roads are crowded with business people. So are the waterways. Water taxis ferry people around, drawing white trails in the deep blue. Despite all the flood damage on this side of the East River, despite the proximity of LI, Manhattan still somehow manages to be a bustling city. It’s still the financial center of the universe, even though New Merica has essentially isolated itself from the rest of the world.
    But then, every so often, I catch a glimpse of the stark gray walls of LI rising up across the water, looking like a giant alien ship or a prison.
    How do these people work here every day knowing what lies on the other side of the river, not two miles away? How can they look out over it and see that wall every day and not give it a second thought? It’s so close. Or do they just pretend it’s not there?
    After the first outbreak, thirteen years ago, the military went in to control the Infected Undead and evacuate the living. Certain parts were declared disaster areas. They set up barriers and controlled access, preventing people from moving back in. These eventually became known as Forbidden Zones. But the zones kept growing, getting larger and larger, spreading out until, eventually, they began to connect with each other. The flooded Wastelands were now truly lost, leaving only the higher points of land free, isolated pockets on which the last stubborn islanders remained.
    The government said sealing the island off was for the protection of the living from the Undead. But Eric once told me the truth was quite different. It was to protect the Undead from illegal poaching by people who didn’t think it was right to let the Undead roam free.
    â€œ The government considers zombies assets,” he told me. “Even those without implants. After all, each one could take the place of a living soldier who won’t have to go into combat.”
    But nobody knows if anyone ever went in and implanted any of the IUs. It seems unlikely.
    Congress passed the Life Service Law almost ten years ago. Now, every single person is legally considered government property after death, not just the ex-criminals, and not just the ones that made up the Omegaman Forces. Although the law has since been challenged several times in the Supreme Court, the politicians and the judges are too spineless to