“Game on?”
Patrick’s smile didn’t falter. “Ai-firm-ai-tive.” Then, regular-voiced, “Ya-ya.”
“Ya-ya, too.”
Patrick nodded. Michael nodded.
“Seat belt, dawg,” Michael reminded.
And he drove himself and his brother from the torching woodland.
CHAPTER TWO
Twenty-two days.
Michael lifted his finger from the Sharpie’d tally in his journal. Wow. Man. Twenty-two days since Halloween. Twenty-two days since Michael followed the Game Master’s Instructions and carried Patrick through a door into the night and saw their first Bellow. Twenty-two days since that moment, since the world seemed to end, but then instantaneously resurrected to a frightening and beautiful life.
Five hundred and twenty-eight hours of The Game, Michael figured. And grinned.
Pretty good for a seventeen-year-old nerd, his five-year-old brother, and a crappy rifle.
He tossed the Sharpie into the station wagon’s cup holder. Patrick murmured in the back but didn’t wake up. Michael pulled out a map from the glove compartment and spread it on the passenger seat.
Outside, the predawn sky was the shade of a bruise. The station wagon sat parked on a half-paved road that was not much more than a path in the woods. A rotten-wood fence ran along the roadside, separating them from a valley. Automatically, Michael scoped it out, taking brain snapshots of the world around him.
The valley: an ugly crater, its flat walls sheered into the rock face.
The small coal refinery: a gray factory, spired with stout smokestacks that made it look like the final castle of some ambushed kingdom.
The refinery’s doors: well padlocked.
But a double-wide trailer (probably the refinery’s “office”) sat in its shadow, about fifty yards from the Volvo. The trailer had been knocked off its cinder blocks, probably by nothing awesome.
The erratic holes puncturing the trailer’s door: shotgun.
And for just a moment, looking at this scene, Michael could almost see someone running in there, finding themselves cornered. Maybe the Someone had been caught by the sunset, which comes almost supernaturally fast in the mountains. Or maybe the Someone was exploring the trailer during the day, thinking they’d be safe . . . and Someone didn’t bother to check the dark of the closets first. Seeing the evidence of people’s Game Over was sad, of course. But it was also, at this point, pretty ridiculously predictable. That was just what happened, right? You did the things the Game Master said or you were out.
Or . . . maybe they just got surprised, Michael, he thought, his smile fading a little. Like you did last night.
Suddenly, the trailer’s door slapped open, and a Bellow lurched from the shadow: an old woman with one ear, her nightgown snapping, flaps of skin coming off her face like soggy wallpaper.
Michael reached under the map for the rifle and thumbed off the safety. No bullets left, dude, he thought. A little thread of fear made him consider driving off.
Man, no. One little Bellow doesn’t get to make me run.
The Bellow began staggering toward the car. Patrick snorted in the back but still didn’t wake, even as the Bellow began its shapeless moan. Michael waited for an idea—an image—about what he should do. Followed his breath.
Then he checked his watch. And felt his small smile come back.
He returned to the map.
COALMOUNT, 13 MILES, read the sign on this country mountain road.
Michael found the state capital of Charleston on the map, then traced outward. This was a regional map, taken from the cabin where he and Bub had ridden out the first few Game nights. The map’s Pennsylvania and Virginia were thick with cities, but most of West Virginia was simply grayed out, with patches darkened to indicate rising mountain elevations. Thick black lines symbolized the interstate; a couple of reds marked the highways; a long blue marking, the Kanawha River, shot north to south through the entire state, occasionally branching with capillaries. The state looked a little like a health textbook illustration of a diseased lung. The first few days that he and Patrick had spent on the road, traveling the switchbacks that dived and webbed through the mountains, Michael had sometimes tried to gauge the contours of the hills around him against the charted elevations on the map. He’d peered close to the paper, as if he might spot his miniature self on it, glowing like a radar dot on a video game map-screen.
Now, though, he just looked at the handful of larger towns plotted along the interstates.
The Bellow let loose another bay. Michael hummed, thought about turning on the CD player, then remembered how sick of “Ron’s GOOD OL’ COUNTRY Mix” he was.
And soon he confirmed what he’d already guessed: Coalmount wasn’t on this map. The map lines converged on the capital city, but he was somewhere out in the uncharted gray. With the woods and the switchback roads and the trailers. Still. He had no idea where he was—and no idea how to find an interstate road to the Charleston Safe Zone and The End.
Well, he thought, there go my vacation plans.
The Bellow staggered over a cinder block and found its footing again, now about thirty yards away, continuing toward him as Michael went back to his journal. He wrote:
Day 22
No one in forest. Smoke in the sky yesterday = from lightning probably :(
Camped near river last night. Kanawha? Not labeled.
In one hunting shed: Backpack/protein bars. Yum.
Last nite, way way more Bellows. 80+? Why? Never grouped together B4. One-time deal? (Plz?)
Fire EXTREMELY good on Bellows. Hate it. Theory about light/eyes = w00t. (Note: let Bub know Game Master confirms! It’s not their skin—it’s the eyes.)
Don’t know where we are. River nearby—Kanawha? Will keep heading south.
Don’t want to stay outside after last night. Thought it wld be fun for Bub. Actually: just cold. And uhhh not fun.
4 Atipax left . . .
Michael lifted his Sharpie, staring at that last note. For a second, he was surprised by a stitch of an anxiety inside.
He added:
P.S. I am an awesome shot ;)
P.P.S. BUT SRSLY: AWESOME.
The Bellow reached the fence, bouncing back a little when it struck. The creature looked down, blankly puzzled.
Michael chuckled.
The Bellow raised a thin, nightgowned arm; the arm sliced downward; the wood blasted apart in a burst of shards.
C’mon over, Grandma, I’ve got something to tell you.
Patrick’s snoring hitched again, and this time, he woke up.
Michael checked his watch, cranked down his window a bit.
Seven, six, five . . .
“Hey, newb,” he said to the Bellow just paces away.
The Bellow replied: “NEEEEEWWW—”
Three, two . . .
“Good morning,” Michael said, and the first shafts of the dawn slit bright and pink over the trees, glimmering the snow and windshield dust on their dashboard. The sunshine struck the Bellow’s eyes: the creature collapsed on its knees, and its roar became a roar of pain.
Michael nodded, satisfied, slapping the dome light off as he put the car in drive.
“Michael?” Patrick said.
“Yeah?” Michael answered.
“Mornin’,” yawned Patrick, stretching upright. “What we doing today?”
CHAPTER THREE
They were a couple hours into the day before the twisting, rutted road brought them to the town called Coalmount. Michael opened Patrick’s door, did a butler bow, and told Patrick his butt crack was showing as he stepped out.
Then Michael climbed over the hood and glassed the new town with his binoculars from the roof of the station wagon.
“Michael?” called Patrick.
“Yeah?” Michael replied, smiling at the routine.
“Nothing,” said Patrick.
The town might call itself Coalmount, yeah, but no offense, ol’ buddy, but you look sliii
ightly like every other coal town ever. Michael scoped the dozen or so buildings on the main street, all of them brick and stout. He noted, not for the first time, that the only structure that looked less than thirty years old was an office building labeled SOUTHERN WEST VIRGINIA COAL AND NATURAL GAS.
“How many Rs are in ‘Faris’?” called Patrick from behind the car.
“Why?”
“I think I spelled it wrong in the snow.”
“Oh.”
“With my pee,” Patrick said.
“Yeah, I got that the first time,” Michael laughed.
He looked back through the binocs, tracing up the length of the main drag. A statue of a coal miner stood in what, if you were feeling just ridiculously generous, you could call the town square. The miner statue carried a pickax, but its face had been either carved or blasted away.
Power poles plastered with Safe Zone flyers (he made a mental note to check if the flyers had road maps on them). Four or five pickups abandoned in chaotic arrangement in the street and sidewalks. That’s more cars than there usually are, though, Michael thought. It occurred to him that the pickups might be a sign that people were still here, and for a second, before he could stop the thought, he pictured soldiers coming around the corner, soldiers they’d finally found.
He surveyed the crust of the snow, searching for footprints . . . but all he saw were wide, erratic imprints: evidence of the Bellows’ shambling gait. He felt a moment’s disappointment, but then also a relief.
There were only ten or so Bellow trails. Some tracks wound to a closed Dumpster he noted he should stay away from; most simply vanished into the dark open mouths of the buildings’ broken front doors. The few scattered Bellows here had sought their daytime sanctuaries in some of Coalmount’s dark crannies, but there weren’t as many Bellows as there had been during the weirdness in the woods last night. Not nearly as many.
“Looks like we’re gonna have to entertain ourselves today,” Michael said.
“What the?”
“No people have been out since last night’s snow. See?” He hopped off the car, pointing the binoculars at Coalmount. Patrick looked through excitedly, his cheek warm and smooth against Michael’s.
Bub’s lips moved silently; Michael knew he was counting something even before Bub lowered the binocs and informed him, “Eight flyers.”
The binocular strap looped around Michael’s neck, and when Patrick saw it drawing tight, he said softly, “Sorry—whoops.” Most kids would yank it as a joke.
But this kid isn’t most kids, Michael thought, smiling a little. Actually, sorta the opposite.
“You want to Game On?” Patrick asked after he’d looked at the town. Michael nodded.
As he always did when they began the day, he hoisted Patrick onto his shoulders, letting Bub do The Yell.
“We’re gonna Game On!” Patrick called to the town.
The Bellows’ echo, from all their hiding places: “GAAAAAME!”
Patrick’s own snow-muffled echo: . . . we’re gonna, gonna . . .
“I’m a butt!” Patrick added.
The dozen or so hidden Bellows informed them that they, too, were A BUUUUUTTT; Patrick giggled at himself. And standing there outside the town that was shouting back Patrick’s joke, Michael felt Bub’s happiness like a transmission, like a tingling signal that traveled perfectly through the fingers that Patrick tapped on his head, through the ankles that twisted in Michael’s hands as he laughed. And the last thread of the anxiety Michael had hardly realized he’d had slipped away. So they got in the car and drove into Coalmount, two Gamers gaming on.
Coalmount looked like it had been postapocalyptic even before Halloween.
Gray mountains, studded with dead trees, rose up and up beyond the buildings around them as Michael drove down Main Street. The sun was a tarnished dime that only got above the peaks at noon, so the towns always seemed like an image on a screen with permanently lowered brightness. A mile or so to the east, the gentle waving of the mountain range gave way to sharp rock, severe and flat: there the coal had been mined by exploding the mountaintops. The silhouette of the range was like a heartbeat measurement that had been alive and suddenly stopped.
When you said “West Virginia” before Halloween, Michael thought, places like this came to people’s minds. You thought of dusty sunlight through yellowing blinds; you thought of damp trailers; you thought of mountains that roamed and loomed and locked, like a fortress designed to keep you in. It was impossible, of course, to grow up in West Virginia and not be told roughly thirty times a week that “Coal Mining Is What Powers Your Lights.” But Michael’s hometown was just a “meh” suburb of the city where West Virginia University was, its own mountains tamed with Walmarts and McMansions. And in places like that, it was easy to believe that coal towns like this didn’t exist.
So entering these towns was always a slightly surreal experience.
Michael parked the Volvo in front of the Southern West Virginia Coal and Natural Gas office on Main Street, which sat beside a tired-looking red church. The office and the church were the only buildings on the road whose front doors and windows were still intact; unraided.
“Pop-Tart me,” Michael said, and they stepped out of the station wagon, Patrick handing Michael a foil-wrapped pastry, s’mores flavor: cornerstone of a healthy breakfast.
“So. Got the message from the Game Master,” Michael said. He paused, taking a bite of the Pop-Tart, grimacing a little at the taste. They’d been old even when they’d found them in Ron’s cabin, and being in the car had not done much in the way of making them less gaaaah.
Patrick nodded, eating his Pop-Tart with both hands. He shivered pleasantly, like he would waiting for a surprise party. There wasn’t anything that Bub looked forward to more than hearing their Instructions. Nor anything that Michael looked forward to more, either—even though, with the way The Game worked, neither he nor Patrick had ever actually seen the Game Master.
The Game Master’s Instructions were delivered in the total silence of night.
And here was how. You stop in the woods, or in a stranger’s emptied house, or in the car along a frost-starred road. You wait for Patrick to go to sleep. And after he is snoring, if you are quiet (very), the Game Master materializes from out of the dark and speaks. You have to really listen: the Game Master’s arrival, when it happens, is no louder than the knock of your heart. His whisper is more silent still. But ahhh man, his Instructions about how to play The Game, his directives about how to get closer to the Safe Zone and to winning: what a relief and wonder to receive.
If all of that sounded like some kind of magic—a Master fashioning the apocalypse around a Game he’d made, instructing you precisely about where you should go next in order to stay safe—well . . . it kinda felt magic. It was a power that would have seemed impossible to Michael before Halloween.
So add that to the “impossible stuff” list, thought Michael now.
He cleared his throat, beginning his imitation of the Game Master’s voice: smooth and richly deep, an utterly grown-man’s voice.
“You’re getting closer to the Safe Zone. You performed well last night, Michael and Patrick. You encountered the first Bellows that seemed to move in a group. ‘Why?’ is a question which may be of importance. So ponder it. But not at the expense of my new Instructions.
“You will set out upon a new town. Although it is not certain, the possibility remains that soldiers—who can escort you to the Safe Zone—may be near.
“I have left, scattered for you in this town, metallic parts for Patrick’s new weapon.
“Because your stores of food and ammunition have been thinned, seek to replenish them. Before you travel from this town, you must earn one hundred points.
“Stay alert. Stay sharp.
“I will be watching. I will be waiting. And I will be, as ever, your Game Master.”
Patrick did a fist-pound, said, “Booyah.”
Michael and Patrick crunched dow
n the street through the ankle-high snow with their pants cuffs duct-taped to their boots to keep out the cold. Their duffel bag was strapped across Michael’s chest, the .22-caliber rifle slung over his shoulder like a fishing pole; with his other hand, he pulled the rusty Radio Flyer sled they’d found at a garbage dump last week.
In the center of town, next to the tiny fountain with the no-face statue, Michael cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting, “Hello!” to the streets. Sun glittered on the snow. Patrick switched his wool hat for Michael’s huge gas station aviator shades.
As a couple Bellows’ replies and his snow-muffled Hello! voice echoed to him—but no human calls—Michael’s brain clicked over everything around him. Standard stuff. Squat mounds of snow-buried cars; soggy Safe Zone flyers (mapless, alas); charred sheriff’s cruiser; gas station with an explosion-crater where the pumps should have been.
“So where ya wanna start?” Michael asked Patrick.
Patrick pointed to the snow-covered downhill street behind him.
Zoom.
They sledded down the series of hills from the square, bobbing through the abandoned cars and trucks, Michael’s arms wrapped around Patrick’s waist, Bub chuckling at fake-danger every time they narrowly avoided clipping the cars.
The Coalmount grocery store was called—seriously— Food’N’Such.
The storefront’s shattered windows had been boarded. Through the open door, streams of daylight filtered in, making the inside dusky.
No Bellow replied.
“All right, Sticky Fingers, let’s clean out the joint,” Michael said. He stepped in over the bits of glass that had been busted from the door. But he noticed Patrick hadn’t followed: he was still at the threshold. Bub tried a grin, but his eyes were afraid, and he was doing that hum of his. Michael felt a tug of sympathy for him—and annoyance with himself.
“Right. Sorry, buddy. The Lightball.”
Michael unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out the weapon he’d made last week: a ball of duct tape, almost the size of a volleyball, with its whole surface affixed with shards of a mirror. Bub took the Lightball from Michael (the globe had several outer layers of plastic wrap, so it couldn’t cut you), looking grateful.
The End Games Page 2
