The End Games

by T. Michael Martin

  Then Michael took out their long, heavy-duty, red Maglite, nodding to Bub: we’re a go. Bub rolled the Lightball into the store like a bowling ball. Michael ignited the flashlight and aimed it at the ball, the light beam striking its mirrored surfaces, the mirrors blazing in turn and streaking star points in all directions in the dusky store, over the walls and the ceiling and the floor, traveling down the center aisle like a scanner and a light-grenade for any Bellows within.

  The ball bebopped jauntily over a couple cans, then came chiming to a stop against the far wall.

  “Booyah.” Patrick nodded, satisfied that Food’N’Such was Bellow-free.

  Then they went shopping.

  The store was pretty standard, the ceiling tiles brown, low, sagging. A Little League trophy topped with a miniature brass kid collected dust on the counter. A 7UP clock, which had to be at least twenty years old, hung over the register, forever proclaiming that the time was 8:40.

  “Ten points for safe cans today, too?” Patrick asked.

  “You know it.”

  They ventured into the aisles, stepping over cans and moldy, plastic-wrapped food. There was a smell of pickles. Patrick went ahead of him—only a couple steps; even then peeking over his shoulder to make sure Michael was close—bending, inspecting labels, rolling away the cans he didn’t want down the aisle.

  Michael felt grateful for his brother’s caution. Last week, when they’d been searching a camping supply store for ammo, Patrick had opened a gun cabinet to find a pair of clawed hands lunging at him from the dark. Michael had been right there, had shot the Bellow instantly—he never even let the creature get close, of course—but even with the points they got for shooting the Bellow, the pure wallop of the surprise had left Patrick so shaky that he didn’t even use his usual of-course-I’m-not-scared cover-up. That was a three-Atipax night, and Patrick took the extra pills with a mix of gratitude and embarrassment that Michael found a little heartbreaking. Michael couldn’t stop thinking about it, either, though for a different reason. The Bellow hiding itself from the daylight was a blonde girl, maybe nineteen. He’d tugged Bub back too quickly for him to really see anything, but she was naked from the waist up, and Michael’s stomach and face had gone explosively hot: it was the first time he’d seen a girl naked. She was rotting. So would you believe there was sorta nothing at all in any way sexy about it.

  Now Patrick bent and opened his Pikachu knapsack and put in two cans of Campbell’s Chicken & Stars, tucking his chin as he arranged them carefully. Then he picked up another soup can at his feet, considering it with pursed lips before swapping out a Chicken & Stars for this new one.

  “Hey, Bub,” Michael said, loading his own duffel bag with some beef jerky, “you don’t like tomato soup, remember?”

  “But you do,” Patrick said casually, zipping the knapsack shut.

  A twist of warmth spread in Michael’s chest. “Are you trying to get on my good side? Because I have to tell you: not gonna happen. Okay, low-five,” Michael said, and drew it away when Patrick went to slap it. “Pfff,” Michael laughed.

  Lunch, Day 22:

  3 jerky sticks each

  Soup for me :)

  Two Flintstone Vitamins for Bub

  (Okay, they’re delicious, I ate one, also)

  Between a couple buildings sat a small dumping yard, and Michael suggested that they explore it for pieces of the new weapon the Game Master told them to build for Patrick (Bub was preeetty sure it was going to be a rocket launcher). They found only some old springs and a busted recliner with no footrest, though, and Michael noticed there were some bits of glass from a shattered television; he told Bub they should probably leave. But on their way out, Patrick spotted a length of pipe sticking out from an oil-stained blanket, and the pipe, upon close inspection, was definitely the barrel for a launcher. Michael packed the pipe into their duffel bag and asked, “When we get this thing done, can I borrow it sometimes?” Patrick said, yeah sure, yeah he could, if he gave him five bucks.

  Michael pointed at the hardware store and said, “Ammo.”

  The windows of Mountaineer Supply were boarded, though not super well; there were foot-wide square gaps near the top of each window, which meant that the store was brighter inside than Food’N’Such. It was also less pickle-y, if more well raided. Michael noted patches in the wood paneling above the door that were a lighter shade than the paneling around them; somebody had even taken the bubble-letter words that had been hanging there. The pale patches were in the shape of these words:

  GOD. COAL. BELIEVE.

  The ghost words were kind of creepy, for some reason.

  Michael and Patrick found an aisle with some kid-sized shovels and rakes hanging on pegs; a handwritten sign claimed that the tools MAKE GREAT BIRTHDAY GIFTS! That just doesn’t seem very likely, Michael thought, amused. Farther up the aisle, twisted coat hangers lay scattered on the floor, some still bearing children’s black sweatshirts. One looked like it actually might be Bub’s fit, but when Michael checked, the neck tag said it wasn’t 100 percent cotton. Which was one of the things that the idiot “doctors” who Ron thought were so awesome had been right about: the feel of synthetics drove Patrick sorta bonkers.

  The glass of the store’s firearms counter was shattered; not so much as a single bullet remained. They did find a couple hunter-orange sleeping bags, though, and a bathroom in the back of the store with a Bellow-repelling daylit window. Michael placed roughly half the nation’s remaining reserves of toilet paper onto the chilly seat; Patrick thought that was hilarious. Well, Michael might happily do a lot in the name of The Game, but one indignity he wouldn’t endure (for the third time, ugh) was getting his butt cheeks frozen to a porcelain thunder box.

  They were walking down the road again when Michael stopped and said, “Wait. Wait, I’m not thinking.” He looked back at Mountaineer Supply, an image flashing behind his eyes. The boards on the windows. The holes.

  Not accidental, something in him said. Those were, like, sniper holes.

  Taking Patrick by the hand, he jogged back to the store. He checked the floors around the windows that overlooked the streets and soon he discovered that he’d been right. There was a duffel bag, filled with ammunition, lying by a window behind the cash register. Boxes of bullets for every gun caliber inside. He felt good, pleased, for a second. Then he realized that the bag was camouflage, and not the leaves-and-grass kind of camo that people use for hunting.

  Soldier camo.

  Wait—were soldiers here? And if they had been, why would they leave this? What would happen to make them leave it?

  Patrick, standing a few feet behind Michael, gasped.

  Michael’s hand blurred automatically for the rifle strapped on his own shoulder. But Patrick was just standing at GREAT BIRTHDAY GIFTS, picking up a tiny toy: a windup tin man with a pickax, like the no-face guy at the fountain.

  “Michael?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You . . . okay?” Patrick said, sounding worried.

  Michael said, “Yeah,” then he wound the key of the toy for Bub. The toy man raised his arms and “mined” . . . though Michael couldn’t help but think that it also looked like he was driving back invisible monsters.

  “A. Roe-Bot. Like. Meee,” Patrick grinned, delighted.

  When Patrick turned the key, though, it snapped off in his hand.

  The sadness Michael saw flash behind his eyes was swift and familiar and overpowering.

  “Whoa, buddy, you’re strong,” Michael said.

  Patrick looked up at Michael. “Yeah,” he said. His face relaxed. “Ya-ya.”

  Love you, too, Michael thought. Then said: “Ya-ya, too.”

  100 points already. Reloaded rifle!

  If soldiers were here, why would they leave stuff behind?

  Maybe . . . some are here?

  No, he thought. Anybody could have a bag like that. It probably just belonged to someone who had lived here in this town and left for the Safe Zone.


  But Michael found something amazing at the bottom of the hill that made him wonder if he was wrong.

  A short school bus, yellow in the road, sat longways across the span of the street, jammed perfectly snug with both ends striking buildings, sandbags stuffed underneath the belly. A barricade.

  “They’re protecting something on the other side,” he said to Patrick, who looked up at him, excited.

  The body and windows of the bus were peppered with bullet holes, though, like the aftermath of an enormous conflict, which was probably not the best indicator that the blockade had been a success. But still.

  Don’t get your hopes up, Michael. Don’t.

  Michael called out for Bellows to mimic him: “I’ve got butt pimples—”

  “—They are narsty—” called Patrick, giggling.

  But no one, and no thing, responded. They crawled through a small cove in the sandbags, Patrick going first, fake farting the whole way through. Day goes by freaking fast in winter West Virginia: it was only 3:55, but that meant they had maybe twenty good minutes for exploring the town.

  The first thing Michael saw on the other side of the school bus were houses, familiar-issue: squat (also depressing and ugly); layered with dust (coal, of course); set with too many too-small windows (covered over with metal and/or wood). The cold air carried that hallmark dead-place smell: sour, rank, coiling, green. But at the end of the road was a building labeled MEETING HALL, and its lawns featured long wooden spikes, pounded into the earth at forty-five-degree angles to repel the dead.

  Michael stood with his brother in the husked-out street, calling.

  He got a response. But it was, alas and aw crap, the same one as always: a deadened, elongated echo from the Bellows’ daytime hiding places in closets and attics and closed coal bins and woodsheds.

  Except.

  Wait: Does it sound different than normal?

  Michael called out, again, “Hello!” his heart lifting a little.

  An image came into Michael’s mind before he could control it, before he could tell himself to calm down. He pictured soldiers coming around a corner, men with weapons, power, and looks of astonishment. Boys! they’d say. Wow! Hell-oh! Wow! Lookit these boys! Lookit this kid, will ya lookit this hero! C’mon, let’s get you out of this place, let’s get you someplace warm, fellas. It’s over, Michael, you did it, you won, let’s get you boys to the Zone—

  And Michael was already walking through the Meeting Hall’s lawn of spears when he realized, in the back of his brain, that a few of them were strangely shaped.

  Four or five sets of planks had been fashioned into crosses.

  He realized why the responses sounded unique: the Bellows’ calls, eerily, were emanating from under the ground, radiating from beneath the snow and earth under his boots. Tacked onto the crosses (the red paint, he noted, was faded) were small wooden signs:

  (RANDAL VOLPE) BELOVED, GOD-BLESSED

  DO NOT TOUCH!!!

  (ABEL MASSEY) BELOVED, GOD-BLESSED

  (GERALD BRAY) BELOVED, GOD-BLESSED

  (EMMA ZARR) BELOVED, GOD-BLESSED

  DON’T DISTURB, BELOVED, MOST-BLESSED

  Michael shook his head, feeling a bewildered resentment. Why the crap would people keep Bellows here? The instructions from all Safe Zone flyers and endless radio announcement loops said that Bellows were to be destroyed on sight.

  But seriously, even if nobody ever told you, how could people not realize: if monsters show up at your home, you get rid of them.

  At least it doesn’t sound like there’s as many Bellows as last night, he told himself. Maybe last night was just a fluke. Maybe—

  And sensed movement behind him.

  As he spun, the snow grinding under his heels, several nearby crows cawed and exploded into flight. On a house where the vinyl siding had been torn off and hammered over the windows, a series of icicles stretching nearly to the ground collapsed, bringing the storm gutters they’d hung from down with them.

  Nobody there, Michael thought, his heart knocking in his temples. He pictured the map, the gray zone, his miniature self lost in all that gray. No Bellows. And no soldiers. No Mom. There’s nobody here, newb. There’s nobody anywhere—

  “Michael?” Patrick said. He looked at Michael, his eyes asking, You okay?

  I—damn, Michael thought. I thought for a second . . . I really thought . . .

  “Just tired.”

  “So . . . just Bellows here, then?”

  “Yeah. I know where we can stay tonight, though.”

  Michael led them under the bus and said, “Piggyback,” as they went back up the hill, Michael pulling the sled behind them.

  Stupid to think . . . stupid to think that . . .

  “Dinner when we get back,” Michael said, crunching through sunset-shaded snow.

  “Okay,” Patrick replied. “I’ll save some of my jerky for Mommy.”

  After a second, Michael nodded. “Good call.”

  He set Patrick down to walk when they reached the level Main Street, and that was when all the thoughts about being stupid vanished from his mind.

  Starlight lay bright and crisp and strange across the snow. Patrick stopped spontaneously, his smile beautiful and alive. They could hear, from some other street, the hoof-falls of the passage of deer in snow. They could hear the crisp crackle of ice splitting in some unknown river. The night, the whole of it, felt like a private thing, as if Michael could grasp the star-rich horizon and pull it over them like a quilt and keep themselves in it forever.

  “Michael?”

  “Yeah?”

  Patrick took his hand.

  They ran to the door of the shelter for the night—the business building they’d parked beside on Main Street earlier—which he lock-picked with his multi-tool, opened, slammed, bolted, chained. By the Coleman lantern’s flat green light, they ate a dinner of dusty-tasting nut bars. Michael laid out their new sleeping bags in the west of the office, tucking his brother in while the moon rose, and that moment of beauty had eased Patrick, so after only one Atipax he clicked to sleep so instantly it made Michael almost laugh, both happy and sad. Day twenty-two, Michael thought. They’d sledded, explored a ghost town, foraged, and Patrick was sleepin’ easy in Southern West Virginia Coal and Natural Gas’s office, ’cause all in all, in this weird Game world they now lived in, yeah, that was pretty much your average day.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  All right, Game Master, when you gonna show up?

  There was this fantasy Michael had, which went like this: go to bed before midnight. Not fancy, nah, but when your muscles itched from a night of driving and a day of snow walking, man oh man, did it sound sexy. How many days without once sleeping through the night? How many hours waiting, exhausted, for their Game Instructions?

  Twenty-two days, plus one day, equals I wanna sleeeeeep.

  Michael sat in a folding chair with an uneven metal seat, purposely ignoring the comfortable leather chair behind the desk. He sipped the last of the Mountain Dew Code Red they’d had with them when The Game began, idly tapping the .22-caliber rifle on his lap, watching a ribbon of world through the planks of wood on the window.

  A snowstorm had moved in since they’d arrived at the office. Occasional shrouded flares of lightning; thunder in the hills. The falling snow largely veiled his view. Michael wouldn’t have wanted to try to spot flashlights or lanterns in the mountains tonight, anyway—not after he’d gotten his hopes up that there were people here who could lead them to the Zone. ’Cause sometimes, looking at the mountains, if you weren’t careful, you could feel all the dark miles that lay between the place you were and the place you wanted to be. You could feel like a radar blip, marooned in the nether-zone of all those miles that weren’t on the West Virginia map. You could feel like The End of The Game wouldn’t ever really come.

  You can feel, his brain hissed now, like maybe the Game Master doesn’t know what he’s talking about—

  Man. No. Don’t even think that.

>   A young Asian boy wearing shredded tuxedo pajamas, his cheek-skin gone, staggered past the end of the alley Michael could see down. Then the snow sealed up the view again. Bellows lurched aimlessly in the roads, like dumb undead drones without a queen, but it was still only the dozen or so Bellows he’d heard earlier. Better than last night. So there’s that.

  But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to be sharp. You still have to feel your blood. Because if you don’t, you’ll think too much; you’ll get your hopes up. Like today, how you thought you were going to get yourself and Patrick to soldiers. And to the Safe Zone.

  And to Mom.

  Michael stood up, roughing his hands through his hair, blowing air out over his lips, trying to push down his frustration. Somewhere out in the snowing night came a whipcrack of lightning, not much more than a flashbulb, but it fleetingly silhouetted the shapes of two Bellows moaning past. And here was the thing Michael couldn’t help but think: the Bellows were the ones remaking the world in their own images. The Game Master, not so much.

  That can’t be true, though, he tried to reason. Okay, yeah yeah yeah, things were frustrating now. But, true or false: the Game Master had brought them this far—safely. True. True or false: the Game Master had materialized in the dark of the night just before Halloween, and told Michael where to go, told him how to save Patrick. True. And the Game Master had told him how the Bellows were not as fast as he was, how the monsters were only mindless pawns scattered in the night. The Game Master had told Michael that he was going to gain the Safe Zone and finally find a place for Patrick to sleep that didn’t have screams or need locked doors. The Game Master had given them The Game, which was a joy, and a miracle . . . and . . . and . . .

  And God, but I’m just so freaking tired.

  Those Bellows last night in the woods, though, Michael . . . they almost got you. They almost hurt you.