Outplay him how?
Michael’s senses searched for his pulse. . . .
He opened his heart to the fear, and the danger beat through his veins, enlivening him, amplifying all instincts, the terror fusing all his focus down to a powerfully bright, pulsing bead.
He looked into the man’s eyes and took the measure of his rage, and fear. He saw who the priest was, behind that rifle, behind those eyes. Michael understood him.
Like Ron.
You outplay him like you do with Ron, how you always keep yourself—and Bub—safe whenever he’s around.
You lie.
And Michael smiled—yes-yes—the crazy exhilaration of knowing what to do outweighing any dread.
He took a step forward, let it become a trot, and offered the priest his hand.
The priest’s finger tensed on the trigger. The crowd didn’t gasp: they seemed to become a gasp, going taut and drawing back.
“Stop,” the priest said.
“Sure thing,” Michael said.
He stopped but leaned in, ignored the gasping crowd, said seriously, “You’re right, though. The man in charge sent me. And if you hurt me, sir, I think he’s gonna be . . . upset.”
The priest’s beetle eyes narrowed with suspicion. “But why would he send a child?”
Who’s ‘he’? Doesn’t matter. Keep going.
“Hey, Coalmount, how ya doing?” Michael greeted the crowd.
One time, the governor had come to talk to his high school; as he’d walked to the auditorium stage, he shook everybody’s hand. Michael imitated that now, the politician’s winky-winky, grabbing limp fingers. “Everyone eating okay? Need any food? Anybody need clean undies? Besides me.”
Michael felt the air shift on his neck, knew what was coming, and had to fight not to smile at things going according to his plan.
The stock of the rifle slammed down between his shoulder blades. He staggered forward, screamed for half a second in his closed mouth. He looked at Patrick, saw him between the passenger’s and driver’s seats; Patrick gasped. Which was good—Michael wanted Patrick to see that these people were breaking the Rules, even violently. Because in a second I can show you that you’re still safe, Patrick, that even with these people breaking the Rules, The Game is still under control. Just keep watching, Bub.
But Michael suddenly thought: Don’t push Rulon too far! If it goes too far, Patrick will know—
“Oh, you a-hole,” said Michael to the priest.
“The foul-minded boy! The sin-thick boy!” His teeth glowed like yellow tombstones. “Do you know what I believe? I believe you are alone. Why would he send a child?”
Now a teary-voiced man in the crowd shouted, “Yes, Rulon! Yes! Get that one!”
“Wait,” Michael muttered, but the priest had no intention of waiting.
Rulon began to raise his rifle. He looked to the sky.
Feel your blood. Calm down.
“Accept the sacrifice,” the priest intoned, “of the one who spilled Your Chosen’s bloo—”
Michael reached into his pocket and drew the old-school cell phone, powering it on, hitting the number pad, saying into the phone, “They’re about to hurt me, sir!”
And the sound—yes-yes—issued forth from the speaker like a small cannon.
“I order you to stop!” called the Game Master.
Blink.
“Sssssttoooooppp!” wailed the Bellows from the woods.
Rulon squinted down at the silver phone in Michael’s hand, as if at some unholy artifact.
Michael tapped a button. The Game Master’s rich accent barked out even louder from the speakerphone. “Again, I order you to stop!”
“Who is that?” said Rulon.
“Ask him yourself,” replied Michael.
Rulon didn’t.
“These are your orders!” the phone replied, anyway.
“The man in charge,” Michael said. “The master,” he said louder, for Patrick’s sake.
“Lies,” said Rulon. But he sounded uncertain. And Michael felt a thrill of yes-yes, because the crowd wasn’t looking to Rulon. They were looking at the phone.
“No one is our master,” said Rulon calmly to the crowd. “We are our master. Who that man is, I don’t know. When the Lord began purifying, we were left to do His good work. We were left to shepherd the first risen Chosen until His Horsemen come. We were left—”
Michael put the phone to his ear, turned off the speaker. “He doesn’t believe m—”
“Enough!”
“Report back to me, Michael!” said the Game Master.
Someone in the crowd, concerned, said, “Rulon? Who is it?”
Rulon watched the phone.
Michael said into the phone, “I’m here, sir. This man, Rulon, still looks a little trigger happy. Are there reinforcements?”
Hit a button. Speakerphone again: “There are soldiers nearby!”
“Awesome to know,” Michael said, and he began to back toward his station wagon.
Rage and confusion tumbled over Rulon’s face. Rulon lowered the gun, raised it, then put it down permanently.
Beat you. And you can’t believe I can do it. Just like Ron.
See, Bub? We are safe.
His fingers looped the door handle and he nodded toward the crowd, winked, gave a thumbs-up. There was no car alarm this time. Patrick peered up through the gap between the front seats, and Michael had an almost uncontrollable urge to low-five him—to touch him.
“Boy?” Rulon had taken a couple steps toward Michael, and for some reason looked slyly, dangerously pleased.“I have only one question. If the man in charge sent you, what is his name?”
“I—”
The voice on the phone crackled. It could have been static. But it wasn’t. “End of your recording,” a robot voice on the phone said. “Play your phone recording again? Press one to play, press two to delete, press three to record a new—”
How long did it take to close the phone? Too long.
No, thought Michael. Messed it up, I messed it up.
His eyes locked with Rulon’s, electricity leaping between them as the cell phone’s voice recorder cut off—
—and Michael slammed the driver’s door into Rulon’s groin and dived into his car. He threw the gear into DRIVE, hoping to outrun the truth:
The voice on the phone had been Michael’s own, not a phone call but a recording he’d made last night when Patrick was asleep. Because, of course, Michael was the Game Master. And there was no Game.
Michael had made it up.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Had Patrick heard? That was all that mattered.
Please frakking no. Oh please no.
“Bub?”
Michael lay low, out of gun sight, driving the Volvo blindly as the attackers’ faces and arms struck the windows. Hands grabbed in through the empty windshield.
“Bub?” Michael repeated.
“Get theeeeemmm!”
“Grab the big one!”
“Move! Out of the way! I’ll cut the tires, let me cut —”
And a gun crack split the dusk.
Michael’s rearview mirror ripped free and flipped onto the passenger seat. He spasmed, trapping his scream in his mouth. Rulon was reloading, perhaps twenty yards in front of them, but there was something more dangerous already inside the car: the tears brimming in his brother’s eyes.
Patrick was hiding in the footwell behind the passenger seat. No: no, he was cowering in it. He clutched his Ultraman, trying to look tough, but Michael saw the truth. The way Bub panted, thin and ragged. The way he rhythmically bit his lip, hard enough to split the skin and bring a bead of blood. The way his eyes were going blank, like a void, like a TV screen the second after the power goes out, like he was tumbling down a long dark hole in himself, a hole that had opened when the world as he understood it cracked wide open under his feet.
Patrick was trying not to Freak.
Why why why? Was he upset because of the gu
nshots and the crazy people, or because he had heard that the “Game Master” on the phone was only a recording of his brother’s voice? Did he know that Michael had invented The Game, had lied every moment of every day and night since Halloween? Did he know that the only reason The Game existed was to keep him away from that ledge inside himself?
“Bub . . . ’sup?”
Patrick’s gaze widened and snapped over Michael’s shoulder. Michael looked and saw a man dashing from an alley to their right, raw lips pulled in a grin, pistol in hand. Michael gritted his teeth and heaved the wheel, speeding left, onto a road that shot off of Main Street, away from the man. They were leaving Coalmount, past the spot where Michael had checked it out with his binoculars, past the rusted sign that asked them to PLE SE COME AGA N! Gonna pass, thanks for the invite.
Michael reached the country route that had brought them to Coalmount yesterday, choosing the opposite direction from which they had arrived, hoping—oh, please—that it would take him to the Others Rulon feared.
“Michael . . . ?” Patrick said softly.
“Yo!” Michael said, his voice shaking.
“It’s wrong, it’s wrong.”
What’s wrong?! Another gunshot at their back. This one took the back right window, splashing glass.
Patrick cried, “Breakin’ the Rules is against the Rules! Other people are supposed to HELP US!”
And Michael slid in his seat as relief made him putty. Oh thank God, he didn’t hear. He doesn’t know. He’s just scared.
But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to Freak.
Because the only reason The Game keeps him from Freaking is that he thinks it’s all safe! He thinks the Bellows can’t really hurt you or him, that there are Rules—that you are his safe place, that you can always protect him.
And now, people were trying to hurt them, people were shattering the Rules, shattering the world.
And these people will make him Freak and disappear into himself—or they will just kill him—unless you get out of here, fast, very.
Patrick’s eyes screamed what Michael now asked himself:
What are you going to do?
Click went the headlights to life automatically, as the station wagon’s sensors registered nightfall. The Bellows had noticed, too: they sifted from the woods on either side of this rutted country route, screaming on the roadside like phantoms in an urban legend. Wouldn’t be long before they clogged the road.
Think. Think think think.
In the rearview mirror, Rulon’s maniacs were coming. They had boarded four-wheelers, motorcycles, dirt bikes. And their headlamps were gaining.
“Are they chasing us?” Patrick whined.
“What do you freaking think?” Michael snapped.
Patrick began chewing on his palm. Patrick’s voice, shamed and quavering, said, “You’re mad at me.”
Oh, good effing move.
Michael swerved, avoiding a child Bellow in a ballerina tutu. “No, I’m not.”
“Then why did you yell?” said Patrick.
“’Cause I’m excited.”
A heavy thud, and a smashing of a headlight’s glass. He’d hit a Bellow. Michael slowed for a split second, shocked. And the motorcycles gained.
“Michael, I want Mommy. I w-w-want her a l-l-l-little.”
No, Bub, you want her a lot, and you want her now. And guess what? I do, too. And now you’re going to start screaming, and I can’t give you a pill to calm you down right now, so this is what is called The End—
Michael, desperate, blurted: “Let’s go talk to the soldiers!”
Patrick blinked: What the?!
“Yeah, Bub, we’ll tell on the cheaters—I saw soldiers last night, I wanted to surprise you—they’re with the Game Master—maybe we’ll even get enough extra points and finish tonight.”
And how are you going to do that? Michael thought. How are you going to “meet the Game Master”?
Shut up! I’ll figure it out. I. Will. Eventually. Soon. Figure. That. Shit. Out.
“Are they close?” Patrick said, voice shaky.
“They’re super close, next door basically, it’ll just take a couple minutes, okay?”
Nothing. Quiet.
“Oka—?”
“. . . Is that a good-guy sign . . . ?” Patrick whispered.
Michael turned his head just in time to see the sign zip past: a sign shaped like a badge, attached to a metal pole.
That, he thought, is an interstate sign.
His entire brain exploded.
Three weeks.
Three weeks.
Three weeks.
Three weeks they’d traveled on the pitted back roads, searching for an interstate entrance. Three weeks in the gray nether-zones of his useless map. Three weeks in the mountains, and they’d only seen one entrance, and that on-ramp had been clustered with empty cars, with razor wire strung across the road.
The only thing on this on-ramp was moon-bright snow.
Breathe.
He turned onto the ramp.
Uuuuuuupppp, it felt like; uuuupppppp the incline of the ramp, the spectacular fantastic incredible on-ramp, yes-yes, zooming as if for a takeoff, gliding with it now.
Snow cometed into the car, but that was nothing, because he could look out and see the whole night in between those white streaks. He fit into the moment. The world slid into clarity around him. He struck a patch of black ice and instantly corrected the car’s shimmy with a flick of the wheel.
The maniacs chasing him didn’t understand: Michael was used to being chased. He’d been outmaneuvering danger a lot longer than just since October 31.
“Bub,” he said, smiling, “I need your help. I need you to be a shooter. I need you to be, basically, Buzz Lightyear.”
“Huh?” said Patrick.
Michael passed the flashlight and the orange toy gun he’d gotten from the office over his shoulder, just something to occupy Patrick until they got away.
“It’s your weapon, buddy. If you see any Bellows, zap ’em with the light.”
Patrick took his hand away from his mouth, hesitating. He gulped. “Can I be Woody instead?”
And Patrick, yes-yes, took the light and gun. And satisfaction and relief blossomed in Michael as Patrick stepped back, at least for a second, from the ledge inside himself that wanted to swallow him whole.
They reached the interstate’s even plain. Cars and big rigs clogged the two-lane, cast ascatter like spilled toys.
Creatures within the big rigs’ cargo hulls screamed.
Cargo hulls’ doors roared open to the new nightfall.
Michael did not breathe and his blood soared through him, and he seamlessly slalomed the Volvo through the just-wide-enough gaps between wrecks.
But you can’t outrun Rulon’s maniacs here, Michael saw—not thought, but imaged. Gun to heart or pedal to floor: that was how it always worked. A plan, fully formed, flashbulbed in his mind, and its brilliant light seemed to transform the world around him into something like a high-definition video-game screen shot, an impromptu tutorial, with arrows and highlights and clues indicating what path to take.
Too many cars, Michael saw.
So, you stop your car.
And hide from the maniacs, in the woods past the interstate guardrail. Climb up a tree and wait it out. Then come back to the interstate in the morning and follow the road to the Safe Zone. To Game Over.
And maybe even to Mom—
“Bub, how ’bout a bike ride?”
“Huh?” Patrick began, but Michael shouted, “Hold on to something!” and crushed the brake.
He did not know why. The yes-yes was telling him to, that was all.
The car screamed over the frozen concrete, and when it finally came to a stop, Michael understood.
His headlights revealed the bottom of a flipped eighteen-wheeler, perhaps ten yards ahead. A dozen Bellows crawled over the underparts, glistening like wasps. If he hadn’t braked, either the Bellows or the wreck would ha
ve ended him.
He wasn’t psychic, that wasn’t it. Just accustomed to the terrible. Very much so. Just ask Ron.
The remaining motorcyclists were still a half mile back, negotiating the traffic tangles. Michael hooked his .22 caliber over his shoulder and carried Patrick from the Volvo.
Michael unbungeed the mountain bike from the back of the car, Patrick still piggyback, then guided the bike through stalled cars toward the guardrail on the side of the interstate, taking out, with his rifle, two Bellows who followed from the eighteen-wheeler.
When they reached the guardrail, Michael put the car keys in his pocket, and something deep inside of him seemed to tear. He and Mom had gone to Myrtle Beach a thousand times in that car, back when it was just the two of them.
“Michael? Why’re you sad?” Patrick asked, leaning over Michael’s shoulder and peering at his expression with growing dread in his voice.
God, he sees everything. Control yourself.
“I’m not, pfff,” Michael said, and turned toward the guardrail.
The falling darkness beyond the railing: a sheer downhill slope, mohawked clear of trees in the middle where power lines were strung, dense Bellow-sounding woodlands surrounding the empty lane on both sides.
It looked like a path off the edge of the known world. Like a void, waiting to swallow him.
No. No. I’ve done worse, Michael told himself. That ride had been when he was thirteen, and the bike had been his birthday present. In his pickup, Ron had taken Michael to the top of a mountain-bike trail in the city park. “Well go ’head,” he’d said, and seemed a thousand miles tall, his smell like sweat and strong coffee, the sun glinting the gem of his championship football ring. But the trail was nasty, snarled with roots. “Your mother and I worked hard for this bike. If you think we got money layin’ around, you can go on back to dreamin’,” Ron said, seeing Michael’s hesitation. “Do you know what hard work is, Michael-boy?”
“I—”
“Oh, did I know you’d pull this shit. You ain’t sittin’ on your ass with your damn video games all day while your mother and I work. A boy should want to ride his bike. Don’t you think that’s what real boys want?” Ron was a bomb. Yes, he was a bomb, and that was the first time Michael lit him. But when Michael’s tears threatened—tears a real boy would never have, he thought—Ron said softly, “’Course, maybe the problem is, this boy’s really becoming a man.” The hairy hand Ron placed on Michael’s shoulder had felt amazing, like everything that was powerful and mysterious and special about grown-ups. How easy it is to believe in kindness when you are young and your world has not yet ended. So Michael rode the trail.
The End Games Page 6
