Uh, no. “Sure,” Michael said.
But he wasn’t going to let one odd moment spoil the afternoon. In the last glow of his first Safe Zone sunset, Michael leaned against the warmth and shape of the thought that there was, at last, another controller of the world. And in the rocking carriage of his Hummer seat, he found himself pleasantly dozing. For something warm was spreading out from his ribs that took him nearly the entire trip back to the Capitol, even with all its stops to open the barricade gates, to recognize.
Calm.
Ease.
Peace.
The Capitol dome was a twilit beacon upon their return. Far in the congregating dark came the sounds of moans and the Bellows’ ceaseless march, but they were punctuated by the frequent booms of detonating land mines.
The captain’s footsteps clocked in the soaring marble halls as he took Michael and Patrick to their own room: the office of the lieutenant governor, which was gloriously boring compared to the chaos of the halls. The captain waited a moment in the doorway before leaving, the hall’s fluorescence silhouetting him: gunslinger, steady, utterly adult.
Later, tucking Patrick in on his cot, Michael glanced out their window, seeing a different view than he’d had in the Senate that morning. There wasn’t much moon to see by; the night was inky, and so the sharp shapes that composed the Charleston skyline were indistinguishable from the dark hulks of the mountains beyond them. And for one moment, Michael had an uneasy notion. The West Virginia that he’d traveled through with Patrick for all those weeks, the West Virginia that was an unmapped nether-zone ruled by insanity and impossibility, the West Virginia that he’d survived only by his exertion to control his thoughts and give shape to his days: that West Virginia was consuming the city.
Well . . . I’ll just stay up for a little while, Michael told himself. To watch the barriers, just to make sure we’re okay.
But by the time he’d brought a bottled water from the next room for Patrick to take his Atipax with, Bub was already deep asleep, without pills to help calm him for the night. And within a minute—for the first time in twenty-four days—Michael was asleep, without waiting up for the Instructions, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The first thing that Michael was aware of, even before he learned that Captain Jopek was in the room, was that he felt good. He woke up on a cot with sunshine on his chest, not freezing, not suffering a whacked-in-the-skull headache, and his anxiety didn’t self-activate.
Still okay, he thought. Still alive.
And that relative calm was the only reason he didn’t cry out when he looked over, expecting Patrick, and instead saw Captain Jopek sitting in the lieutenant governor’s chair.
“Soldier,” the captain said, “welcome back to the land of the livin’.”
Michael tried to not look weirded out by the fact that, uh, the captain had been watching him sleep. “Hey, ’morning,” he replied, not wanting to feel weirded out, either. But out of habit, Michael’s gaze clicked down to the desktop the captain sat behind. The body of a huge green-black rifle sat centered among a spread of metallic parts, apparently in mid-process of being cleaned and reassembled. Some reflex in Michael tried to judge by the progress of the gun’s assembly how long the captain had been here. But besides the fact that you hit the X button to reload them in first-person shooters, Michael knew nada about such heavy-duty weaponry.
“Anybody ever tell you,” the captain said, “you sleep like the dead?”
Michael laughed a little; the captain looked slyly pleased. Michael pushed his blanket aside and sat up. Then the captain did something amazing: still looking at Michael, he went back to reassembling the rifle, intricate fingers seeking out parts and snicking them back into their homes.
“Me, I’m not much of a sleeper. Sleep always feels like wasted time,” the captain said. “How is it that a feller like yourself can get such damn good shut-eye, d’you think?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, is sleeping so good just the gift of the young? Is it good genes? Just a blessin’ from above?” the captain said musingly. “Or do you think it might be”—snick-snick—“that you can sleep”—snick—“because you don’t have nothin’ weighin’ on your conscience?”
Springs, taut-coiled, entering gun guts, snick; bullets, five small morning flashes of gold, eaten in the clip, clack-click.
Michael suddenly thought, He knows I was lying about the soldiers.
“It could just be that I’m a weakling,” Michael said, trying not to sound nervous.
The captain didn’t laugh at Michael’s self-deprecation. He only stared, his eyes oddly unreadable, his expression a blank, and Michael was reminded of that unease he’d felt during his conversation with the captain in the cafeteria, that vague sensation that the captain was somehow dissecting him.
Finally, Michael said, “That’s awesome,” indicating the captain’s assembling skills.
An enormous grin split the captain’s blank face. “Thanks for noticin’!” He seemed to consider Michael for a second. His fingers paused.
“So, uh,” Michael said, “is Patrick around?”
“Bobbie’s got him. . . . Can I ask you somethin’, soldier?” the captain said.
“Sure.”
“You ever feel like you were born for some special greatness? Like even if the world didn’t see it—wouldn’t see it—every day of your life, a marvel was coming your way? Like you were something they could never imagine?”
Michael tried to consider the question honestly. But he was distracted, because he noticed something strange: the captain’s accent, which had faded in and out yesterday, wasn’t there at all—hadn’t been, actually, since Michael woke up a minute ago.
At Michael’s hesitation, the captain waved a hand almost angrily, his enthusiasm apparently dampened. And when he spoke, the accent was back. “You want to know why I’m here, I guess.” He slapped the clip into the bottom of his now-assembled rifle, stood, and looped the strap over his shoulder. “Well, I want to tell you a secret. Walk with me, I never could stand sittin’ still.”
Michael followed him into the marble hallway with its disordered scattered cots and vandalized governor statues. Still feeling anxious, he allowed the captain to lead him around the ring of the Capitol’s central rotunda. Above them, the great golden dome glowed with daylight.
“I tried to get on the horn this mornin’ with the rescue unit again,” the captain said. “The signal ain’t great. Actually, to tell you the truth, I’d rather yackity-yack on a tin-can telephone. The mountains’re pretty, but they sure don’t love radio signals. Wish I knew how to boost the signal, but I’m a good ol’boy, what do I know?”
Michael could hear the voices of the others somewhere. He wished he were with Patrick.
“Did they say how far away they were?” Michael asked.
“Neg. But I’m guessing two days. They were askin’ about how many we got here, and I told ’em about you and your brother. Since they’re from the Richmond Safe Zone, I asked ’em about your mother.”
Michael stopped in his tracks, the sun suddenly painfully bright. His heart hammered.
“They couldn’t answer before the signal went out,” the captain went on. “So I did a little research on my own. I found a list that the government was making before the Charleston Zone went down last week.”
Captain Jopek reached into his camouflage jacket and pulled out a folded white paper, columned with names. And written at the top were these words:
CONFIRMED DEAD (FEMALE), WV SAFE ZONE
Michael felt his insides go liquid. Oh God, he thought. No. No, please—
But then, after allowing Michael to gaze at this terrifying header for a full second or two, the captain chuckled, “Whoops, heh-heh. Other side, soldier.” He flipped it over, handed Michael the paper.
CONFIRMED CHECK-INS (FEMALE), CHARLESTON SAFE ZONE, 11/1–11/5.
This list was far longer, but Michael spotted the highlighted name immediat
ely.
MOLLY JEAN FARIS. CONFIRMED CHECK-IN: 11/4.
Tears pushed on Michael’s eyes. He didn’t smile: he just felt lightheaded. Mom made it, he thought. God, she really did.
“Thank you,” he breathed.
“Yessir,” Jopek said nonchalantly, and clapped a hand on Michael’s shoulder.
Michael had not actually been thanking Jopek, though: he’d been thanking . . . he wasn’t quite sure what. “Thank you for showing me this, Captain,” he said.
What about Ron? Is he on a list, too?
But Michael realized . . . he didn’t want to know.
“You’re welcome. I just want you to remember one thing, okay, Michael?”
Suddenly, the enormous hand on Michael’s shoulder squeezed, with enough force to power over the border from “buddy-buddy” to painful. The captain’s other hand shot up, ripped the list from Michael’s grasp, left Michael holding just two torn triangles of paper. “The reason you can sleep?” said Captain Jopek. “It’s me, Michael.
“So next time we go out in the city, you don’t goddamn ever tell me when it’s time to go home, how ’bout that, shithead?”
And before Michael could respond, the captain stuffed the paper back into his jacket, and walked away.
Michael felt his cheeks flare and prickle. The captain’s echoing footsteps dwindled down the hall, but Michael stood still, feeling dazed . . . and oddly ashamed.
Why the hell did the captain have to do that? he thought, anxiety creeping up his throat.
He stared at the jagged paper in his hands. Maybe he was right, though, Michael tried to tell himself. I mean, maybe I shouldn’t have said we should go home. He’s the soldier; he knows what he’s doing.
But Michael still felt hot-faced, and a little angry.
He began to follow the dim sounds of voices through the halls. He was almost to the Governor’s Dining Room (aka a random cafeteria) when Patrick came out of a bathroom and waved.
“Michael, hey! Don’t go in there, it stinks now. Hi!”
Michael grinned as Bub approached, comforted by Patrick’s excitement to see him. He slipped the torn paper into his pants pocket—and despite his happiness, he felt a sudden gloomy pang in his chest. He’d never been more aware of the gulf that lay between himself and Bub. Michael had just received news that 100 percent validated The Game, that justified all the danger he’d guided them through since Halloween. But Bub was still unaware of the tightrope that they’d run together. And until he had solid earth under his feet in the Actually Safe Zone in Richmond—until they reunited with Mom, and began to remake their lives—Michael couldn’t tell him, Bub, I was scared Mom didn’t make it to the Safe Zone. I was scared that running away didn’t actually save anything, ’cause nothing worked out in the end. The “yes-yes” and “the Game Master”? I was pretty much terrified that they were full of shit.
Michael settled for saying, “Awesome shirt, duder.”
Patrick wore a new hoodie: blue and gold, with a deer silhouetted by a sunrise. The shirt was a little long, but otherwise a good fit. “Bobbie gave it! It’s soft. I drawed this for you.” He handed Michael a piece of paper covered with red and silver scribbles. “It’s Ultraman.”
Michael replied, “Obviously.” As they headed toward the dining room, he could smell something sweet and buttery. Sweet baby Jeezus, cinnamon rolls.
And he’d begun pushing open the cafeteria door when he heard the sound inside—a sound so familiar and so foreign, and it stopped him. Is someone crying? Michael thought.
He cracked the door, peeking through. Hank and Bobbie sat alone at a red cafeteria table; the cafeteria was only half lit, the sections beyond them dark, but there was light enough to see by. Hank leaned forward with his elbows on the table, one hand in his hair, his other holding Bobbie’s hand. And standing at the door, secretly looking in, Michael realized something that left him a little awed:
Hank was crying.
“It’s hard, I know it’s just so hard,” Bobbie was saying softly. “But Richmond, it’s just waiting for us. You have to focus on that, Henry. And you said yourself how smart your father is, you know it? And this captain of ours, he’s a good ma—”
Bobbie paused, as if reconsidering.
“He’s so good at what he does,” she finished.
“Y-yeah. You’re right,” Hank said, his voice warped and throaty. His face looked so weird to Michael, like a little kid’s. “But . . . what if the other soldiers get here before the captain can do it?”
“Do what, sweetie?” asked Bobbie.
“What if the captain can’t find—”
“Why’s Hank crying?” Patrick whispered.
Michael flinched away from the door just as Hank’s head sprang up. Patrick’s brow knitted, confused and troubled by what was happening. “I bet he just has a stomachache,” Michael whispered to him.
A chair scraped in the caf. “Gonna go fill the generators,” Hank said to Bobbie. A moment later, a door (not the one beside Michael) opened somewhere, and the sound of Hank’s footsteps faded away. He must not have seen me, Michael thought. Though, he wondered. . . .
Patrick opened the door to the Governor’s Dining Room. Bobbie was clearing plates from her table, her head down, speaking softly. Michael glanced around, expecting to see Holly (and honestly, really looking forward to it).
There was nobody else in the room, though.
As the door swung shut, Bobbie flinched and looked up, startled. She looked much older than yesterday, somehow.
“Good morning to a handsome sleepyhead,” Bobbie said, trying for lightness, not quite making it. She collected spoons into a bowl half filled with oatmeal. “I did make you breakfast, Michael, but I am so sorry, a puppy named Patrick ate it.”
The bowl of oatmeal suddenly slipped in Bobbie’s hands. It crashed onto the tray, spoons clattering.
Patrick, who had been walking toward a table covered with blank papers and Crayolas, stopped, his shoulders pinching back. Michael could feel Bub’s tension ping through the air, his emotional radar lighting up. Michael considered making an excuse for both of them to leave.
But, no. I don’t want to just leave her by herself, not if she’s upset.
“Miss Bobbie, I can get those,” he said casually as he walked to her. He picked up the tray. “Would you show me where the dishes go?”
Bobbie shook her head absently. “Just back in the kitchen,” she began, but then she understood the meaning behind Michael’s question. Gratitude made her worry lines relax. “I will, certainly. Patrick, would you do another sketch of that robot for me?”
Patrick had sat down at the table and picked up a red crayon. He looked relieved at Bobbie’s new tone, if still confused.
“Heckz. Yez.”
The door to the cafeteria’s kitchen was past an empty salad bar. The kitchen was darker than the dining room: light filtered through the porthole, swinging as the door shut behind Michael and Bobbie, glimmering across the stainless steel of the sinks and counters.
“That was very kind of you,” said Bobbie. She pulled a red handkerchief from her pocket. She raised it to her face, then seemed to realize she wasn’t actually crying. She wiped spots of oatmeal off her hands instead.
“Miss Bobbie, can I ask: What’s got you so upset?”
“It’s just something the captain said,” Bobbie replied.
Remembering how small the captain had made him feel, and now experiencing a little anger about how Jopek had upset Bobbie, Michael asked, “What did he say?”
“Oh, Henry asked last night, after we got back, if he could help the captain with his patrols in the fences outside the Capitol. Henry is always so eager around him. But the captain just said, ‘You ain’t got no job other than sittin’ on yer butt ’til I tell you otherwise, Henry.’ Maybe it’s good that the captain is taking care of everything, I suppose. Maybe he was only trying to be friendly. But something about the way he said it felt . . . not friendly. I don’t know why, but so
metimes, when I look at the captain, it’s as if there’s a secret in everything he says.”
Like when I said we should get back to the Capitol at sunset, and the captain pretended it didn’t make him angry. But Michael pushed that thought down: he’d only imagined the captain’s anger.
“I’m probably just thinking too much. It’s all this waiting; it’s so difficult.” Her voice trailed off; she shook her head, frowning in wonder. “I can’t imagine how it must have been for you, out there. The cold. The lonesomeness. The not-knowing. I don’t know how you did that.”
“Aw, it wasn’t that bad,” Michael said, downplaying the difficulty out of habit.
“You sell yourself short, honey,” Bobbie said, looking him earnestly in the eye. “You do.”
Michael paused, tempted to again shrug off the compliment from this sweet old woman. He’d never known his own grandparents, but he’d always thought that old people’s smiles and their “Hey, good-lookin’” and “I think y’all might be the best marching band in the state” were too sweet—unearned was maybe the best way to put it.
But there was something far different from that too-sweetness in Bobbie’s eyes now:
This is painful, Michael. It’s safe for you to admit that to me.
“It was . . . tough,” he said.
“That’s one way to put it,” Bobbie chuckled, momentarily brightening. “Michael, may I ask a strange question?”
He nodded, wanting even more, after her kindness, to make Bobbie feel better.
“When you were out there, when you were just trying to get through each day,” she said, “did you ever pray?”
He started to say, No, or, to be polite, My family’s not really religious. But then he remembered seeing the Coalmount church, before he’d found the mirror-eyed mannequins. How the steeple had pointed for the sky. And he remembered the feeling he’d had on the cliff just before the balloon arose from nothing: that sense of awe, both good and terrible, as if a plan were being invisibly synced together for him and Patrick, like unseen clockwork behind a curtain. Those cliff-and-church feelings had not been yes-yes, exactly. Yes-yes was an inner quiet, both weapon and joy, that supplied an understanding of how Michael must handle himself in any present moment. The church-and-cliff feelings had felt different, somehow.
The End Games Page 12
