The End Games

by T. Michael Martin

  “Captain? Pardon me, Captain?”

  “Bobbie.”

  “Since it’s still daylight, I’d like to do the lookin’ out,” Bobbie said. “If Henry doesn’t mind letting me use his gun, of course.” She elbowed Hank’s arm, looking nervous but also a little giddy. Like there was nothing wrong in all the world.

  The captain tipped his helmet to her. “Bobbie Lou, I think you just got Henry’s job.”

  Hank didn’t look super pleased.

  Bobbie looked at Michael, offering him her smile: that bright revelation of wrinkles and white teeth and eyes. She winked, and silently mouthed, “Maybe they’ll recruit me”—but Michael still felt so sick with shame that he looked away.

  He followed everyone else around the maze. Holly kept trying to catch his eye, asking with her expression: you okay? Michael felt a swell of embarrassment, again cast his gaze elsewhere, saw Bobbie on the Hummer out of the corner of his eye.

  Hay tugged and danced across the ground between them. Bobbie’s silhouette stood crisp against the orange sky. She lay a hand on the roof-mounted machine gun, as if it were a possibly warm stovetop. Her small shape looked so fragile, as if a wind could lift her into the sky, and for no reason Michael could name, that idea made a moment of fear chill his chest. He had a frighteningly childlike urge to call out to her. Then she was raising her hand to her forehead, saluting them, pretending to be a soldier.

  Michael turned without a salute back.

  The captain led them into the shadow of the movie theater’s marquee: MAGIC LANTERN THEATER—HORROR-A-THON—GET UR TIX EARLY—SHOWS SELL OUT. As he kicked in the door, the smell of stale popcorn rippled out. Hank screamed when a body pitched out of the shadows, but it was just a cutout of Vin Diesel.

  Michael looked into the dark. No, I am not that old “Michael” anymore. I explored places, just like we’re doing now, for twenty-three fugging days, before I met Jopek, Michael tried to reassure himself as he stepped into the theater.

  An old movie theater lobby: dips of velvet rope, moldy pretzels and lumpy nacho sauce, fake coffins propped against the walls.

  Captain Jopek’s face, floating in the dark, turned toward them.

  “Stay sharp, ladies.” His breath was a ghost.

  “This is Captain Horace Jopek of the United States Army! I am here on a search-and-rescue! If you’re alive, call out the first three letters of the alphabet!”

  Now everyone felt for one another as they moved in past the last of the light, holding the shoulders of the person before them like a blind-man’s chain: Captain, Holly, Hank, then Patrick and Michael.

  Captain Jopek, his gun light lancing like a glisten-sharp sword, looked like the point man of a covert team in Battlefield 3. “All right now, check your corners,” Jopek said, “staircase over there, Jopek, check it, clear, bet your ass it’s clear.”

  His body moved with the precision of a machine. Every step was solid and certain of purpose and stealthy—but Michael did not feel any admiration for Jopek’s power right then. It seemed arrogant to him, and ugly.

  Heading through a theater-room door, which was splattered with dried blood.

  People were in their seats, Michael saw, when different villains shambled in. One scream. Popcorn arcs in the cut of movie light and the audience boils up with panic. Stampede for the too-small door. Panic when people begin to be bitten; panic, and in the half-light, it is not possible to tell who is good and who is not.

  Cold wind uncoiled through the theater door, whickering dead leaves up the aisle. Patrick slipped a little; Michael did not look at him but gave his shoulders a reassuring squeeze.

  “What’s under there?” Patrick whispered. “What’s under the leaves?”

  Something weird, under the crackling leaf-carpet—soft, but with a gooey weight.

  “Ho’, shit,” said the captain, as if seeing something up ahead. “Ho’ goddamn.”

  “Captain,” said Hank. “What’s the situation?”

  The captain swung the gun light up and speared the silver screen.

  A shape seemed to shift beyond the movie screen.

  “Captain,” Holly murmured to herself. “Should we be here?”

  The captain was striding toward the screen now: fast and sure, until he skidded again, on something slick, the gun light a quick slice across the movie screen. And it was at that moment that fear began to rise in Michael like poison water rushing up a well, because there were other shadows behind the silver screen; they were growing, now they were more defined, like something drawing closer in a nightmare from the other side of the veil. Patrick grabbed Michael’s hip and said, “Look.” Down the aisle, the captain regained his footing and his weapon rose, and while Holly gasped in revelation and Hank began to holler, Patrick said, “Look! Michael, LOOK!” And, now, Michael did. In the reflected silvery half-light, it was hard to tell what Patrick held pinched between his thumb and index fingers.

  But Michael looked closer.

  And the thing dangling from Patrick’s fingers looked directly back at him.

  It was an eye, a human eye, torn with the ropey rosy stalk still attached.

  The movie screen. It bulged. Teeth and hands burst seams through it. And there in the vivid gun light were Bellows, two dozen Bellows, coming forth like three-dimensional demons breaking free from the scariest movie ever made.

  Hank hollered. Holly cried out, stumbled back on a seat.

  The captain only laughed and opened fire, filling the room with his perfect, video-game-hero’s fire, the gun bursts flashbulbing his perfect hero’s face.

  Michael watched Holly, saw the relief on her face, the same that he himself had felt when the captain mowed Bellows from his balloon—

  —but this is different! The captain isn’t just “saving us” right now! Michael thought. The captain isn’t noticing something!

  Eyes. The eyes!

  The Bellows coming from the movie screen: they had no eyes.

  “Uh-oh!” Patrick shouted at something behind them, his voice half-fright, half-fun as he pulled out his toy gun.

  Michael spun, seeing the several shadows lurching through the theater door. The captain paused to reload.

  Michael listened to the monsters’ footsteps: like glass, like crunching broken glass.

  They came in through the front door, he understood. Even though it’s daylight, they came in through the front door, and stepped on the glass the captain broke!

  “Captain!” shouted Michael. “We have to get out now!”

  “For twenty points,” he added under his breath. Michael picked up Patrick and sprinted down the aisle toward the captain.

  “Captain, we have to leave!”

  “Stand down,” the captain barked, still smiling, his eyes glittering. He was firing on the screen again. “Captain’s got this; can’t be that many back there. Ha!—sons-a-bitches can’t even see!”

  “Captain,” Hank shouted, “behind us—”

  The captain whirled and popped four perfect shots to destroy the brains of the Bellows in the theater doorway. He spat tobacco, spun back, resumed his firing on the theater screen . . .

  . . . and were there more Bellows there now, even though he’d been massacring them? . . .

  Yes-yes.

  Michael reached the captain, forcefully grabbed his shoulder. The captain tore his shoulder away, and his glare blazed into Michael.

  “Listen!” Michael shouted. “They’re all coming from outside! If we don’t go, they’ll trap us in here!”

  “Outside?” The captain laughed. “It’s still daylight.”

  “I know it is, but . . .” Michael began—and the thought finished itself: “—they tore their eyes out so they could go outside in the day!”

  The captain glowered. “Get back, and that’s a goddamn order.”

  You have to get us out, Michael! he thought. At that moment he remembered: The captain’s got another gun strapped to his ankle.

  Michael knelt so quickly that even the c
aptain could not react in time. Michael found the Velcro and unstrapped Jopek’s combat-issue pistol in one seamless, yes-yes move.

  Michael felt a joy at the captain’s anger.

  “The hell?” said Captain Jopek, gaping at Michael, as if astonished that this skinny kid stealing his gun could exist at all.

  And that was the only reason Michael had time to turn and run up the aisle, saying to Holly and Hank, “This way,” firing his own three perfect shots at the new Bellows streaming in through the theater door.

  What am I doing what am I doing.

  Answer: Grabbing the controller, FTW!

  Michael charged into the hall and Patrick held on piggyback and Michael felt Patrick’s excitement and his own blood and spotted his reflection in the glass poster cases and thought, Hot diggity—badass.

  “Faris!” Hank barked, running behind him, voice strained with confusion. “Wait for the captain!”

  Two Bellows moaned in the lobby—a fireman, a thin woman in a polka-dot dress. Shot down with his huge handgun. “He’ll catch up,” Michael told Hank, because he did hear the captain firefighting his way out of the theater, and at the last moment before Michael led Hank and Holly into the blazing sunset, the captain dashed around a corner into the lobby and shouted:

  “Don’t you go out there! There’s still m—”

  But the rest of the captain’s shout was drowned out.

  Because Michael had been right.

  Outside Bellows roared and echoed death-calls, clots in the bright bloody light, moaning from the sides of the shopping square corn maze, coming closer. Despite the joyous adrenaline of the moment, the previously impossible sight made a clean run of terror through Michael. The walking dead. The dead, in daylight.

  “C’mon!” Michael said, leading everyone from the infested theater.

  “Goddammit!” the captain shouted. “Ho’ up!”

  The stalks of the corn maze ahead surged and whipped. “Daaaamn—GOOODDD—” the maze roared. Bellows reached out from the corn sightlessly, their eye sockets cored to oval pits of gristle. Michael gave the maze a wide berth.

  He had just begun running past it when the captain opened fire in his direction.

  The maze exploded. The land mine, on the other side of the maze’s fence only ten feet to Michael’s right, blew high as the captain’s bullet struck it, raising a man-tall spiral of concrete and fire. Hot air displaced into Michael; he cried out and stumbled to the ground. Debris peppered down; more camouflaged mines detonated. Whampf!—WHAMPF! Corn and walking corpses leapt.

  Michael’s ears rang. He blinked down at Patrick, who had fallen on a hay bale beside him. “Too loud!” Patrick said.

  Now the captain was long-strong striding, gun nocked, past him.

  “What was that?” Michael spat.

  The captain said, his eyes glittering both bitterly and happily, “Didn’t think you’d seen the Zeds in the maze. Just protectin’ you, Mikey.”

  The captain led Hank and Holly around the maze, first clearing the route ahead with three grenades, lob-shot from the undercarriage of his gun. Michael picked up Patrick and rubbed his back, dashing through the avenue the grenades had cleared.

  At last, they came around the end of the maze . . . and Michael realized one of the screams did not belong to the Bellows.

  “Bobbie.”

  The creatures had surrounded the Hummer. Bobbie was on top of the vehicle, at the gun. It should have been fine; should have. But the gun was clicking drily. It was a thing he would hear in dreams for the rest of his life: despite the Bellows and the distance, that heartbreaking and toylike click!

  “Here! HERE! Captain, I am here!” Bobbie called. “The roof-hatch won’t OPEN!”

  “God, no,” Holly moaned miserably.

  Michael raised the handgun, but his finger froze on the trigger. His hands were still quivering: what if the bullet flew wild?

  Patrick, in his arms, moaned, “What’s happenin’? What happens if they get Bobbie?”

  And yet here now came the most awesome thing Michael had ever seen.

  It was a great enormous sweeping majesty, a sight that should have been projected widescreen, HD, two hundred feet tall and twice that wide to tower in glorious slow-motion. The captain’s gun flying up to his shoulder as he sprinted. His eyes were single glowing firing pins. His face was a tuned searchlight. Like some tremendous flame exploding through the glass and rafters of a structure that can no longer contain it, Jopek was force. He was unleashed.

  The Bellows fell like a sacrificial ring around the vehicle, with the Hummer never even dented by a single imperfect bullet.

  Dumb gratitude overpowered Michael. The captain plucked the pistol out of Michael’s hands.

  Do what you want, Jopek, he thought. Whatever it is; just get us back. The Bellows were beginning to clog the street and the way back home would be rough, but who cared; now everyone was rushing to Bobbie, and she was shaking but beginning to smile. Holly and Hank piled into the back of the Hummer; Michael put Patrick in there, too, and the captain was getting in the front. Michael said that he’d help Bobbie down from the roof, went to the passenger side, which was the area most cleared of corpses.

  “Come on! Hurry hurry quick, we’ve got you!”

  Bobbie put a shaky hand on her chest and sat, scooting her legs over the edge. Her coat ballooned at her waist. And she slid off.

  It was Bobbie who first spotted the monster’s arms shooting out from beneath the Hummer.

  She was beginning to fall toward Michael’s awaiting arms when her face went shock pale in the last of the dusk. She tried to turn back, to grab out, to regain the roof.

  She landed between Michael and the Hummer, one ankle bowing in.

  The Bellow’s rottening hands grasped Bobbie’s jean-clad calves.

  Not happening.

  The monster’s face emerged from the darkness beneath the Hummer. In life it had been a girl, no more than eight years old. The Bellow opened its mouth and an insect slithered out, went up its eaten nostril.

  Yellow teeth met Bobbie’s pants just below the ankle: riiiiiipp!

  NOT HAPPENI—

  Bobbie’s head tossed back; her spine rattled. Michael grabbed her, kicking the Bellow’s head until its neck snapped and its head lolled.

  He didn’t look at Bobbie’s face. He looked straight at her leg. No blood. It’s fine. She didn’t get bit. The denim had stopped the teeth. A miracle.

  Then, blood.

  A thin single streak of red leaked out of the hole in her jeans and began to fill her sock.

  Bobbie locked her horror-white eyes with Michael’s.

  And as she began to scream, he clapped his hand over her mouth.

  Though panicked, he felt his breath, his quaking chest.

  No one was watching.

  “Don’t,” he whispered to her. “Don’t—don’t tell anyone.”

  What are you doing, Michael?!

  Bobbie’s eyes shouted: But—

  I can’t let her die, Michael thought. I should have seen that Bellow—she is not just going to die!

  “Listen to me,” he said. “We’ll—we’ll figure something out.”

  Bobbie’s gaze trailed down to her ankle. Total terror, that’s what was in her eyes. But was there also a faintest hope?

  Lie to her, Michael. Lie, hurry, she’s going to die, this is a lady who’s actually going to die so lie, LIE.

  His stomach hurt, and yeah he felt sick, but he said the thing that activated the only chance he had:

  “I have an idea. T-trust me.”

  Was it enough?

  Michael watched her nod.

  She didn’t scream when he lifted his palm from her dry lips. But her mouth still moved.

  As Bobbie offered her desperate face to the dying bright heart of the sky, Michael realized: she was praying.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Soldier! Drive the ’Vee!”

  Startled, Michael looked up. The captain’s silhouet
te stood on the roof.

  “Move us!” The captain slapped a clip into the mounted weapon, tugging back the slide. Dozens of blinded Bellows, after all, were gathering, their shadows scrawling out in the square, remaking the world in their images.

  Michael numb-nodded, got in the car.

  How long does it take to become a Bellow? He’d never actually seen it happen. And Bobbie’s bite was small, barely bleeding, which had to help, right? Would the change take an hour? A day? He thought back to the first infected people he’d seen on Halloween. Just move, Michael! He sat down.

  “How did they know to tear out their eyes?” Hank was asking Holly, like she would Google it.

  Where was Michael going to drive them? Just get Bobbie to the Capitol, then figure out what to do. ’Cause if you tell the captain, right now, that she got bit, he’s so freaking “tough” that he’ll just leave her.

  And what exactly do you think you can do to help her?!

  I don’t know—I’ll figure it out!—I know I can. Maybe the soldiers will have a cure. Maybe we can just amputate her leg. Horrible but it might work, if Bobbie didn’t lose too much bloo—

  Feel—

  “Faris, take us home, goddamn it!” boomed the voice above him.

  Michael cranked down the window, answered, “I don’t know the way!”

  And from the back:

  “Bridge, left, left, right, left”—a sniffle—Shit!—“right, right, movies,” said Patrick.

  “It’ll be reversed going back, though,” Michael said.

  “So do it!” Hank squealed.

  And Patrick began to reply with the correct reversed directions, but Michael spoke over him: “Bub, sit up here, Bobbie can fix her harness by herself this time, stop trying to help her!”

  All at once:

  “Go—”

  “Faris, drive—”

  “MOVE—US—OUT—”

  Have to go, oh fug, bad bad bad, Patrick be careful!

  Michael ignited the engine, wheeled a wide arc, turned the correct direction. To the sounds of screams, arms of Bellows swished in through his open window, through the open doors in the rear.

  The mounted weapon above their heads, manned by Captain Jopek, roared doom.