The End Games

by T. Michael Martin

  Bellows in the headlights were spun from their shoes. Spent copper shells cascaded across the windshield.

  “Go right?” Michael called to the back of the car—not because he had forgotten the directions, but because he did not know if the screams included one of pain from Patrick.

  “Left, retard!” Hank cried, slamming the double doors closed.

  “Right,” Patrick sniffled.

  Michael told him, “Ten points!” thought again, How long does it take to change into a Bellow?, swerved to the right and everyone screamed, like riders of a roller coaster that has begun to tilt homicidally from the tracks.

  The new road was filled with twice as many Bellows.

  Didn’t matter. The captain unleashed fury like chains of fire, shot out land mines that raised roaring towers. The monsters flew, flipped into gutters, splashed through dusk-filled storefront glass and into cars, whose alarms went REEEE! And the only Bellows Michael had to avoid lay already dead on the ground.

  Michael felt a powerful, frightening love for the captain. He looked in the rearview; Bobbie was nodding off, Patrick clinging to her, trying to shake her awake.

  “Up here, Patrick!” Not loud enough, Patrick didn’t hear.

  Suddenly, Hank stood and pointed out the windshield. “Plaaaaane!” he screamed.

  The sight through the windshield was so huge, so surreal, that at first its danger didn’t register.

  An airplane.

  It was a jetliner, enormous, and it had used the street as a landing strip. Its nose had ruptured the concrete. Only one wing was visible, for half the plane was inside a gray building. It was the plane that had brought Bobbie to Charleston. One hundred souls, fallen from the sky; welcome to your final destination.

  The visible wing was coming like a brilliant guillotine.

  Michael swung the wheel wildly, knowing even as he did that it was too late.

  The great steel of the wing came whistling, and struck. The car bucked wildly on its shocks. Friction drew sparks in a fat line down the edge of the car, the shriek hideous and bright.

  The captain’s voice, from above, growled, “Switch.” Combat boots materialized in Michael’s window, pushing him to the passenger seat as the captain monkeyed from the roof into the driver’s seat. He took the wheel and looked at Michael.

  “Goddamn near threw me, you dumb asshole,” said the captain.

  Michael nodded. Just take us home. Just make everything work. Why had he not told the captain about Bobbie? Just then, he couldn’t remember.

  “Sorry,” he breathed to the passengers in the back as they flew past the gate that separated the explosive side streets from the mine-free main roads, careened by the Busted Knuckle Garage, BEST PLACE IN TOWN TO TAKE A LEAK! And Michael did feel terrible, he felt ashamed, but he was also looking back because of Bobbie. How much longer before she changed?

  Bobbie moaned, then slouched, unconscious, against the chest-bar of her seat harness.

  And for the first time since the insane drive from the Magic Lantern began, someone noticed that Bobbie looked unwell.

  Holly, sitting across from her, said, “Miss Bobbie, what’s the matter?”

  Beyond her, through the portholes on the rear doors, Michael could see mobs of Bellows; dozens more were out front, too. Many were eyeless, but by now the last slice of sun had slipped beneath the horizon. Even the Bellows who had not learned to destroy their sight were emerging from the city’s hidden darknesses, from doorways and manholes and Dumpsters. What’re we gonna do if the captain isn’t up top shooting? Omigod, what’re we gonna—

  “Throw ’er out the back!” shouted Captain Jopek.

  They’re going to throw Bobbie out!

  Hank, slimed with sweat, stood from his seat and threw open the double doors.

  But he did not reach for Bobbie; he did not seem even to have noticed her new unconsciousness. Instead, Hank reached for the gurney in the back. He grabbed the sheet off the gurney, pulling it upward like a matador; the wind sucked it out the open rear door.

  The gurney was loaded with grenades, which were stuck to the mattress pad and the bars with duct tape.

  “When?” Hank called.

  “Wait till we get ’round the corner to cut it! We got a ten-second delay on those frags. I want to clear those assholes on the bridge. I wanna watch them try to swim.” Jopek’s face was smiling, his voice was so, so calm. Like it was all a game.

  They swung around the corner, the last one.

  Hank loosed the chocks from the gurney’s wheels, then yanked upward on the silver line that had been strung among the grenades: all the grenade pins flicked up at once, like bright popcorn. He thrust the gurney out the rear, where its wheels met the road, squealing smoke. A rope-tether, tied on one end to the gurney and on the other to a pole on the inner wall of the Hummer, unspurled rapidly then tugged, taut.

  “Henry, my good man: cut it!”

  Hank’s face was hard and determined, but his eyes were also shiny with joy.

  He nodded and reached for his pocket. And that was when, with slow dreamy terror, his smile transformed to a frown.

  “Dropped it,” he breathed to himself, disbelieving. “Captain, I dropped my knife in the theater—THE GRENADES’RE TOO CLOSE THEY’RE GONNA BLOW US U—”

  “Aw, hush,” the captain said.

  Did the captain ever flinch? No. He took the handgun from Michael’s lap—the same one Michael had stolen from his ankle—and turned in his seat and, only half-looking, single-shot the thick nylon rope that tethered the deadly gurney to the back of their speeding car. The severed rope zipped through the back and out to the screaming street, and a moment later the crowd of Bellows swallowed the homemade mass-extermination device whole. The explosion was huge, scorching, a great radius of blast that burst Bellows away from earth and their own limbs. The sun had set now, but for that moment the captain resurrected the day, and his light still had the power to hurt all the Bellows, blind or not, as much as he pleased. Holly put her hand to her chest like she was trying to push down her pounding heart. Hank reached out for Holly’s hand, which she took. So everyone was looking out the back, at the captain’s fire, when Bobbie opened her eyes and raised her face to Patrick, and turned into a Bellow.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Michael knew that he should move. He should dive into the backseat and grab his brother.

  But he couldn’t. He couldn’t help thinking of Halloween.

  The expression on Patrick’s face had been the same, then . . .

  . . . as Michael opens the door on the side of the garage, telling Patrick about The Game. Now there is the night with its smell of leaves and its feeling like freedom, and of course Patrick is afraid of the dark; but, of course, he pretends not to be. “This is so cool, huh?” he only whispers, and clasps his hands tighter on Michael’s chest.

  And then, shattering the dark: the scream.

  A man’s, from the blue house across the street: “I don’t know you, darlin’, but you best get outta this house, pronto! You—HEY! You come at me again, I swear I’ll shoot! Get back! Get baaAAACC—” A burst of sound and light from the neighbor’s living room window: a woman’s body crashes out through the glass, landing on the jack-o’-lantern in the concrete driveway with a sound that makes Michael’s throat crawl.

  Michael freezes. His brain shouts, fleetingly, that this is a Halloween prank—but then all thought comes to an end when a light turns on in his house, and he realizes Ron is coming, Mom is coming, and she is going to ask him what he is doing out here. . . .

  Michael looks back, to maybe reassure Patrick. But though Patrick’s frightened hands are unclasping and clasping on Michael’s chest, his mouth is also fidgeting to not smile. He thinks this is The Game, Michael realizes. He thinks that lady was a bad guy. And he’s trying to look brave.

  Because becoming brave means something—maybe everything—to him.

  And just before the front door of Michael’s house opens and the night
falls apart, Patrick’s eyes hold a hope: a hope that maybe this time, he, Patrick, can finally be strong, even when things are scary. That hope that if he is just brave enough, he can outrun the pit inside him.

  That hope that is so beautiful, and dangerous.

  As the Hummer roared across the bridge to the Capitol, Bobbie’s eyes widened . . . but not just to whites. Her eyes were a rapidly pooling black. It was as if the old woman’s pupils had been pierced by a pin, and the darkness was leaking out.

  Holly turned away from the fire behind them and noticed Bobbie again, this time recoiled instinctively and without sound.

  “What the?” Patrick whispered.

  “WHAAAAAATTTT!” Bobbie screamed.

  Her hands curled into claws, her jaws a nest of fangs. She meant to kill; there was no doubt.

  She lunged.

  And with no more than a half inch between her claws and Patrick’s face, her seat harness caught her, with a click!

  Michael dove for her. His ribs struck the hard top of his seat and sang. For a terror-syrupy moment, he was caught atop the seat, wriggling.

  “PATRICK, GET AWAY!” he cried, and finally thudded into the rear of the Humvee. Hank and Holly watched in shaken awe.

  The monster wearing Bobbie’s skin lunged again, this time throwing the harness off with impossible strength, and Patrick was just staring in confusion.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on back there?” Jopek shouted, heaving the steering wheel back and forth as he dodged the few remaining Bellows ahead.

  Michael snagged Bobbie by the arm of her coat, redirecting her momentum, slamming her to the floor. Something inside her snapped, hard and loud. Tears leapt to Michael’s eyes, his stomach going hot and loose.

  The wind was shrieking with each swerve of the car; the rear doors flapped and zoomed, back and forth.

  “What—what—what—” Hank kept repeating.

  Without warning, Patrick burst into tears, collapsed onto the floor.

  “She got bit, oh Christ, she got bit somewhere!” Holly cried.

  Everything was screaming. Everyone knew.

  Bobbie squirmed beneath him like a weasel in a sack. But her eyes: they hadn’t turned all-black like Bellows’ eyes yet. Thin white strands still remained in her eye sockets, and the dark and light in her eyeballs were churning, as if warring for domination of Bobbie’s body.

  Bobbie, in her own voice for one millisecond, said, “Michael?”

  She’s not all-dead yet—oh God, maybe we can still figure something out. We’re almost to the Capitol, just hold her down, just for a few more seconds—

  Michael called out, “Hank, help me, hold her—Hank!”

  But in that moment, roaring again, Bobbie’s hands flew up and shoved Michael toward the sucking door. He grabbed out blindly, and somehow snagged underparts of a seat, stopping on his back; he could feel the vibration of the tires beneath him.

  Bobbie stood again, seeming to flood the compartment, huge in her hunger. An image rose, unbidden, in Michael’s mind: let her come, grab her again, throw her out the door.

  Because you can’t save her, Michael’s mind hissed, and the hopeless thought flooded him with a new variety of terror. Bobbie had been kind, utterly good, but she was going to die, this was her ending. And there was no controlling that.

  And as despair struck him in the endless milli-moment, Michael pivoted out of Bobbie’s path, caught Bobbie by the left shoulder of her coat, and spun her, flung her perfectly into the jump seat mounted on the door.

  “Michael—” said Holly, her voice quaking and teary, “do you need help?”

  Michael ignored her, slamming the roller-coaster safety-bars down on Bobbie’s shoulders, incapacitating her at least for the moment.

  “Bobbie. Bobbie.”

  He smelled her breath: stale and old.

  In the dueling blacks and whites of her eyes was a slowly dawning recognition.

  “Are you there?” he heard himself say, from far away.

  There was a sniffle behind Michael. From the floor, his chin trembling, Patrick asked Bobbie, “How come you’re being mean?”

  Bobbie blinked.

  Her eyes went normal-white again.

  She touched her face.

  And burst into tears.

  And then the captain was stopping the car at the statue of Abraham Lincoln, opening the rear door.

  He didn’t holler or rage. He only gently motioned everyone to step out to the fenced-in rear promenade of the Capitol, like a slightly tired crossing guard. “Bobbie, girl, you come on out now. And I mean nice and slow.”

  Michael felt himself step down out of the car. “Captain, can’t we wait?” Michael said. “Do you have to do this?”

  The captain just nodded.

  Michael felt the pain and terror from Bobbie and Hank and Holly, circling in the air over their heads. He felt Patrick’s confusion. He was even vaguely aware of everyone, himself included, following the captain’s orders to go into the Capitol. At the top of the great stone steps, Hank opened the double doors. Patrick, still sniffling, whimpered, “Michael . . . what’s he gonna do? Michael, w-what happens if a Bellow bites you?”

  Holly took Patrick’s small hand with her big one. Michael looked at her with an almost painful gratitude. She was silent, though, and didn’t look back as she guided Patrick inside the Capitol.

  Michael didn’t follow. From the top of the stairs, he looked back down to the captain and Bobbie, beside the camouflage Hummer. Michael noted numbly that the buffer-zone gates in the barrier fences were all open, even though the captain had never stopped, tonight, to unlock them.

  Bobbie was clutching her stomach.

  Suddenly, she bent over from the waist, dry retching.

  The dark sky with its scud of stars seemed low, suffocatingly low.

  “When’d you get bit, girl?” asked the captain.

  Bobbie retched once more. As she leaned back up, her gaze flicked to Michael. She looked back at Captain Jopek.

  “On top of the car,” she rasped, her voice hoarse and weak. “While you were inside.”

  Why is she lying?

  She doesn’t want Jopek to be mad. She’s protecting me.

  But you couldn’t protect her. . . .

  “Why do you ask?” Bobbie said to the captain. And the same expression came across Bobbie’s face that had come across Patrick’s earlier: hope. Was it always so hard to look at?

  “Captain,” she went on, “do you think I might be all right? Do you think the soldiers can reach us and help, somehow—”

  The captain didn’t answer. It was unclear what he was doing, pacing calmly away from her, boots clocking. Then he seized two handfuls of the chain-link fence.

  He tugged, and the section of fence ran along its tracks, shutting in front of Bobbie’s face, locking her out. Far beyond her, from the other side of the downtown bridge, figures in the dark steadily approached and steadily moaned.

  “Ain’t nothin’ nobody can do,” said the captain. He cocked his pistol. “Shit. Damn, Bobbie Lou, what a mess. I swear to God: I’ll make it quick.”

  Tears glided down her face. “Wait,” she said softly.

  “Can’t talk me out of this, girl.”

  “I know.” And for that moment her voice was strong again, her anger beautiful with its vitality and life.

  Bobbie raised her eyes, away from Jopek: her gaze pointing to the low stars. She was speaking to something she could not see. Was praying going to make this better? Michael wondered desperately. Was it—?

  The gunshot flashed and illuminated Bobbie. She had no time to scream. Captain Jopek of the United States 101st turned in the starlight, watching Michael with eyes like guilty verdicts, the gunshot still echoing through the night, through Michael’s screaming heart.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Michael undocked.

  That was how it felt: one moment, he was an inhabitant of his body. And then he was floating into the Capitol.

 
End. Dead. Thanks for playing.

  Screams, in the black of Capitol rotunda. Hank, screaming. His white shirt glowing like a spirit. Hank kicking out and striking the pirate-patched head of a bronzed governor, sending it ponging between cot legs, away into the dark.

  Somebody turned out the lights.

  The hall’s only illumination was coughing out of the tripod fluorescent light-banks. They were knocked over, thrown on the floor. . . .

  “What the HELL!” Hank was shouting.

  Grief, Michael thought. The world is full of dead people, and that is the first grief I’ve heard.

  “What the HELL IS THIS?! DAMN IT! GOD! DAMN IT! GOD!”

  Everything looked oddly unhooked. A wind through the door could knock this building into the sky.

  “Hey!”

  Michael turned.

  His brother was running to him, dashing as fast as a little boy who is rounding third and heading for home. But this isn’t home. No, this isn’t home at all. A wave of homesickness, sharper than any he had ever felt, threatened to overwhelm him.

  Patrick collided, hooping Michael’s waist like steel, hugging him with fierce need. And for some reason, the homesickness felt so much worse.

  Across the hall, Holly sat on a cot, her back locked straight, her eyes big and dully hard, like unpolished glass.

  Patrick said something into his right thigh, the skin tickling there. Michael looked down, which seemed to take a very very long time.

  “Is Bobbie gonna play, still?” Patrick said.

  Michael watched his brother from the far theater of his own skull. He knew that he should flick out a lie, a comfort. But all that came to his mind were funeral scenes from games like Gears of War.

  She was a good grunt, a damn good one! Raise your guns to her, men! She’ll be missed!

  “Where is she?” asked Patrick.

  Michael said, “She’s out.”

  And now the hugeness of her death seemed to send a dizzying kind of vertigo to his heart. She was dead. Away away. Call in a thousand doctors; collect a million med kits; none of it would help. Jeezus, it is not fair that she died. That was a stupid thought, what everybody thought when anybody died. But that didn’t make it untrue.