The End Games

by T. Michael Martin

  He spent the rest of his birthday in the emergency room, his collarbone broken in two places.

  But that was before, Michael told himself. Back when I still thought he was safe. Before I realized I had to, like, take scary things and use them.

  This wasn’t a suicide run. This was a hill made of Awesome and Getaway.

  Michael lifted Patrick into the kid’s seat mounted on the back of the bike. God, he felt so small.

  “We’re gonna hafta go purty fast,” Michael said. “Sooo guess who gets to control our headlights?”

  Michael demonstrated, turning the flashlight on behind the binoculars, so that a single beam entered the back of the binocs and twin pipes of bright shot out the front.

  Patrick smiled a little, in awe. He put the orange toy gun into his pocket, took the light and binoculars from Michael.

  The riders—Michael did not see Rulon among them—reached the Volvo, dismounting and searching the car in the light of their headlamps. Michael got shakily onto his own bike. He was toeing silently forward when Patrick screamed:

  “Wait! Michael! Ultraman! I forgotted him!”

  One of the riders shouted, “Oh Lord! There! The side of the road!”

  “I got him in my pocket,” Michael lied.

  And he pushed off.

  The mountain whooshed.

  One instant they were on flat; the next, the world tilted up in a misty punch of snow. The drop was far steeper than it had looked, and the snowstorm thick enough to blind. But Michael focused desperately on the adrenaline-sick pulse hammering in his throat—

  And he twisted around the crawling Bellow, leaning into his turn, and it felt that he was leaning onto air just firm enough to hold him gently up.

  He smiled without realizing it. Yes-yes, this was chuckling at gravity. This was, in the depths of insanity and wrong, perfectly right.

  Exhilaration.

  Freedom.

  Control.

  “Left-left-left!” he said breathlessly, and Patrick shot light upon a Bellow emerging from the woods.

  “Reach fer the skyyyyy!” Patrick cried in his cowboy voice.

  The Bellow screamed and fell and sledded down the mountain on its back.

  “Nice shootin’, Tex!” Michael heard himself say, and his brother laughed, clapping happily on his back. And Michael remembered joy.

  Now came the first four-wheeler, following, flying over the guardrail.

  Its headlight hung wildly among the treetops to their left, then landed down in the snow.

  Michael hooked the bike into the tree line. Here the moonlight faded, so the forest was a maze of shadow. A hundred trees seemed to blast into existence just beyond his handlebars— dangerous, ah, and thank you very much for that. Michael jabbed the handlebars, surging between the trees like a missile.

  The four-wheeler entered the woods, its headlight whipping side to side as it copied Michael’s path.

  Up ahead came what Michael had hoped for: a thick collection of trees, their trunks so tight they’d be impossible to steer through—

  —except for him.

  He wove straight through, so close he felt the bark brush his sleeves, and an instant later the four-wheeler tried to follow and an instant after that, the four-wheeler crashed.

  “Newb!” Michael crowed.

  Go.

  Go.

  This is mine.

  I can bike every mile of moonlit snow in the world.

  Chase me, ’cause me and my brother?

  We. Can. Run. Forever.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Michael shot out of the trees, into the clear lane between the two sides of forest, and it began to occur to him that, despite the three motorcycle-riding crazies still coming down the snow-covered mountain for him, he was really going to make it. He was going to be safe. He would find the Others that Rulon had mentioned, and sometime—maybe soon—he was going to make it to the Safe Zone and The End. No more secrets, he thought. No more lying all the time. I won’t have to do this anymore. He was going to find Mom, and everything since Halloween and after it—all the time away, all the battles with Bellows—would be worth it.

  He was thinking those things when he gasped, because he saw something wonderful ahead that blazed through him like light.

  Charleston, he thought breathlessly. That is Charleston.

  Down the mountain, in the valley a mile below, Michael saw a golden dome, tiny from here, lit up like a Christmas tree. Spotlights beside the Capitol building traced into the sky, blotting out the starlight.

  “Patrick! Bub, it’s the Safe Zone!” Michael said.

  Patrick gaped over his shoulder, going, “Whoa-ho-ho!” in amazement.

  “We’re going to win—” Michael began.

  He saw the coming threat at the last, last second. A buck, a deer, hugely antlered and explosively fast, had cut in front of him. Michael yanked the handlebars, and felt his bike tipping with a slow, gummy, nightmare awareness.

  The bike collided with the ground, hurling snow, its leftover speed carrying them forward. Patrick cried out; Michael felt him slip away.

  Get the bike! Michael thought even as he barrel-rolled violently through the snow. Keep going! He sat up, his eyes stinging with snow. “It’s okay, Bub!” he said. Half blinded, he was patting the ground, looking for the bike. . . .

  The ground vanished beneath his hand.

  Cliff.

  Michael felt a screaming vertigo and paddled backward.

  “Michael!” Patrick called, a few steps behind him . . . which Michael could see because of the light of the motorcycles, which had stopped maybe fifty feet back.

  The Bellows were coming from the tree line, too, behind Patrick. Many of them glistened and crackled, their limbs lined with ice.

  We’re trapped.

  The men on the motorcycles stepped off their bikes, stamping toward them through the snow.

  Michael ran to Patrick, held onto Patrick, his heart thudding, and he felt his blood, and—

  And, he didn’t move.

  He didn’t run.

  “Help us, Michael,” Patrick said. “Please.”

  Standing between the coming killers and the edge of the world, with no place to flee, something happened. Michael felt his own breath course down his raw throat, his blood rushing through his terror-stoked heart . . . and a feeling he couldn’t name enveloped him.

  It’s fine, said the strange feeling.

  It was deafening, inside.

  But it was, too, amazingly, purely calm.

  And strong: so strong that it didn’t seem to come from him, as yes-yes did, but through him. It was a voice so immense and not him that the instructions could have originated in the stars. And the voice was telling Michael what to do.

  Wait, it said. Just wait.

  What? his mind protested. Why?!

  “Michael, what are you doing?” Patrick said.

  Wait.

  “Michael—” Patrick cried, “Michael, what is that?!”

  Michael turned, expecting to see the city. But something had taken the city away.

  Awe and dread overpowered him.

  Oh my God.

  Over the cliff, something was rising: an orb, like the dark twin of the true moon.

  “What is that?” Patrick breathed. “Is that real?”

  “It’s real, Bub. It’s . . .”

  The orb ignited.

  “A hot-air balloon,” said Michael.

  And it was.

  CHAPTER NINE

  They stood there while the shadow eclipsed them.

  Why the balloon had arrived or where it came from: mysteries.

  But, a fact: the balloon was a jack-o’-lantern.

  Up from the cliff’s edge came twin black-hole eyes, a great triangle nose, a huge, magic, maniac, Cheshire-cat smile. The rising aircraft smelled of fire. Snow fell onto the canvas and hissed away as strings of steam. That hiss—like a cat, recoiling—was the only sound.

  This is going to scare
Bub! Michael thought. The panic overrode him, deleting the strange, certain feeling he’d possessed a moment before.

  But Patrick surprised him: the balloon reflected in his eyes, and he gazed upward with cautious happiness, like a child playing peekaboo.

  “Whose balloon?” he said.

  Someone must have ignited it. But there wasn’t anyone in the pilot’s position. The basket was empty.

  As startling as if the moon itself had been turned off: the balloon’s flame, untouched, snuffed out with a puff.

  Michael and his pursuers flinched. The balloon loomed, and the basket creaked.

  A shadow rose, up from the basket’s floor.

  The moment stretched and twisted. It could not have been more than half a second, but the pilot seemed to rise ponderously, like a terrible jack-in-the-box unfurling in slow motion. The pilot had no visible eyes—he was total silhouette—but Michael felt him scanning them all. As the pilot reached full height, a second shape rose, in his hands. A gun shape.

  Michael fell on Patrick, hugging him into the snow as the shadow opened fire.

  Light flashing: thunder trying to tear the world.

  The Bellows had been staring up at the pilot, like Patrick. So they had no chance. One shot each, one bullet each: skull center, every one.

  It was impossible, even with an automatic, but the pilot seemed to catch all of them at once, as if some unseeable scythe had cut them with one shining swoop.

  The motorcyclists who had been madly pursuing were now madly attempting an escape. There was a momentary, somehow considering pause from the pilot; he cocked his head.

  As the motorcyclists reached the rim of the forest, the pilot plucked three quick gun bursts.

  Three bodies fell face-first into the shadows of the tree line.

  The aerial assassin pivoted one final time and aimed his weapon at Michael.

  “No no no, wait, no!” Michael screamed.

  He kicked back in the snow, pinned naked on a bull’s-eye.

  The balloon descended slowly on its own. The pilot stood preternaturally still, like a statue in a hurricane, even as the basket settled in the snow, dangerously near the cliff.

  Night-vision goggles were strapped to the man’s head, the lenses protruding on stalks. An oxygen unit covered his mouth. With his breath curling from the mask’s side cylinders, he looked like a knight and a dragon both.

  “S-sir?” Michael said.

  The gun aiming at Michael never moved.

  Patrick squirmed out from under him and sat up, his eyes big and clear with awe. “Who is that?”

  It could have been anybody. The man was a blank.

  The pilot raised a hand.

  “Name,” he said. The voice rang. Hard. Cold.

  And without waiting, the pilot cocked the gun’s slide in preparation.

  Michael shot to a stand. “Wait—”

  “Your name!”

  “What?”

  “SAY THAT GODDAMN NAME OF YOURS!”

  “Wha—Michael Faris!”

  “Count,” the voice said. This word came calmer; for the first time, Michael noticed a slight hill-country accent in it.

  Count? He thinks you’re a Bellow!

  “Sorry, wait wait! One two three four five sixseveneightnineten.”

  The man didn’t answer.

  Michael paused, swallowing dryly.

  “Is that okay? Is that enough? Sir?” Michael said. “’Cause honestly, if you want me to count higher than ten, I gotta take off my shoes and use my toes.”

  The joke was for Patrick’s sake. But Patrick didn’t laugh.

  “Him too.” The pilot pointed his rifle at Patrick.

  Michael stumbled left, shielding his brother. “Hey!”

  “Move.”

  “Sir, he’s fine!”

  “Damn, but I looooove proof,” the man said.

  Patrick stared. “What’s your name?” he asked softly.

  “Count.”

  “He’s fine. Bello—those things can’t talk like he’s talking!”

  “Are you the Game Master?” Patrick asked.

  “Patrick—”

  “The what?” the man said.

  “Are you the soldiers Michael saw?”

  Pause. Pause. “Where’d you see soldiers?” the man said.

  “Pretty close,” Michael said; he cringed inwardly. “Sir. Please. We’re fine.”

  The shadow considered it.

  “Well. I’m Captain Horace Jopek of the United States Army 101st,” he said. “And I’m wonderin’ if anybody’s lookin’ for a ride to the Safe Zone.”

  A soldier. Captain Horace Jopek. Captain Horace Jopek.

  Michael stood, feeling curiously light. I did it, he thought. I freaking did. Oh my God, we’re safe. Game, the eff, Over.

  “Jeezus, why didn’t you say so?” Michael said, laughing a little.

  Patrick was grinning shyly, half hiding his face against Michael’s leg. “It’s okay, huh, Michael? We won, huh?” Michael nodded.

  “So, where you ladies come from?” said Captain Jopek.

  The captain took off his goggles and mask. As Michael’s adrenaline began to subside, he realized that this captain was titanic, one of the tallest men he’d ever seen. The captain seemed about forty, and somehow his face emphasized just how huge he was. The wide, stubbled chin looked as powerful as the slabs of his forearms; his nostrils were cavernous and black. And despite the cold, a kind of heat seemed to bake from his skin. A jutted brow shadowed his eyes—they were dark double zeroes—but the remaining pieces of his expression were full of the good humor of a man who has just come across a secret.

  “Our bike,” said Michael. Patrick helpfully pointed over the cliff, grinning.

  “Just the two of ya?” the captain asked. “No soldiers with you?”

  Uhh. “No,” Michael replied.

  “Well, ain’t that a reg’lar West Virginia miracle,” said the captain, and winked at Michael. His breath was thick with sickly sweet tobacco.

  “Whelp, I guess it’s time to hit the sky,” the captain said. “More of them bike loonies will be back soon, believe me.” He patted the rim of the basket good-naturedly. Michael became aware of the sounds of more Bellows in the woods.

  God, The Game worked. I made it real. He reached for Captain Jopek’s hands.

  “The brat first,” said the captain.

  Michael hesitated a second.

  In the end, it wasn’t entirely his choice: Patrick slinked from behind his leg when he realized they were going to fly. The man quickly lifted Patrick up and set him on the floor of the basket. Michael felt a momentary, surprisingly brilliant pang of separation as his brother disappeared from view under the lip of the basket.

  Without hesitation, Captain Jopek turned to extend his hands to Michael. This is real. It’s really over—

  But the captain’s expression froze him. “What happened there?” the captain said, an odd and cold and calm smile on his face.

  What happened where? Michael was going to ask—but his fingers found the same place the soldier’s eyes had. His neck. Blood there. The tumble from the bike must have torn open the scratch he’d gotten last night. “Oh, crap, you know what?” Michael said, half laughing. “There was one of those monsters, in a miner’s outfit—”

  In a sleek blur of movement, the cold eye of the assault rifle’s barrel raised on Michael. Michael recoiled, almost falling in the snow. “Jeezus!” Despite his panic, he fought to still sound respectful. “I’m not infected, sir! It’s a scratch.”

  “Scratch,” the man said.

  Michael nodded.

  Patrick sensed the tension, tried to chuckle, hummed.

  The gun went down, the soldier’s gaze came up, and for the first time Michael saw his eyes.

  What happened next could have been a trick of light, a quirk of exhaustion.

  The sparks of moonlight in the captain’s eyes seemed to fly to the pupils and vanish. Michael realized: there was nothing
to read in Jopek’s eyes.

  And Michael was beginning to reach for Patrick, because something wasn’t right, he was always able to read people—but some black object was coming at him: the stock of the captain’s automatic rifle, looping up and up, flying almost like his great balloon. Michael heard an explosive hollow thwok, and the last thing he saw were Patrick’s fingers, his brother’s fingers, reaching out for his.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The winter winds, which seemed to snarl in the alley beside their apartment before gathering strength and pouncing out, were growing colder. The night was like a thing you could reach out and snap. It didn’t even matter if you were inside.

  Michael shifted on his quilts on the living room floor, looking up at his mother’s face. See, Michael baby, she said, her smile floating above him, like a warm moon, it’s like a adventure thing. She palmed the quilts flatter and fit his mittens on his fingers. You remember Indiana Jones? Wasn’t that movie fun? That’s what this is just like, baby.

  He’d heard Mom on the phone with the gas company earlier asking how could they have the heart in the middle of February, but it never occurred to him that the call and the adventure had thing one in common.

  All he knew was when she smiled at him, like they had a secret, he couldn’t imagine ever feeling cold again.

  He whispered to her: Really?

  Very really, baby, she said. Yes, yes.

  They lay down, curled against each other, beside the crackling fireplace. He kept humming the theme from Indiana Jones, only quitting when Mom stopped helping because she had fallen asleep. The winds were really bellowing now: the front door began sounding like a barrier against the boogeyman. But he wasn’t scared.

  He was an adventurer.

  He loved Mom’s tiny, dreaming breath on his cheek.