The End Games

by T. Michael Martin

  And yet, Michael suddenly knew: I’m going to get us out of here. Somehow, I am.

  He jumped when Holly yelled, “Captain! Not here!”

  She was in the rear of the store, behind the pharmacy counter, just past the glass condom cases he always pretended not to notice when he went to a pharmacy with Mom.

  Michael took one last glance back at the buck.

  It was gone. Must have left to find the others.

  How do you know you can get out of this, Michael thought, shaken a little out of that nearly eerie silence.

  Because . . . he answered, smiling, because that’s what I always do.

  And then he was dashing down the aisle to the pharmacy, not even caring that the keys were tambourining in his pocket.

  He slapped his hands on the white pharmacy counter. “Hey,” he greeted in a whisper.

  Holly had been looking at a door with a square of darkened glass that led to the storerooms. “Oh. Hey,” she said, trying to sound friendly, then turned away again. “Capta—”

  “Heyshutupwaitwait,” Michael hissed, scrabbling over the counter. He came down on a collection of empty pill bottles, half-skated on them. He reached Holly and without thinking, put his hand over her mouth.

  “Can I help you?” she said, muffled and angry. She shook her head out of the muzzle, leaving Michael’s hand slimy.

  “Sorry, but please don’t yell for the captain.”

  There was a scuffy sound beyond the door—the sound of steps moving over spilled boxes and coming closer. Sounds of Patrick talking to Jopek. Hurry.

  “We’re getting out of here,” Michael continued. “Grab some Atipax and we are gone.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to tell Jopek I got an alert from the soldiers, on the radio in the Hummer.”

  “That’s . . . not gonna work, Michael.”

  “The food is ready, though. And I’ve got the keys.”

  “He’ll just get on the radio and check—”

  “I’ll drive away before he can—”

  “He’ll take the keys—”

  “He doesn’t know I have keys—”

  “He will if you say you used the radio in the car!”

  “So I’ll say something different, I’ll figure it out,” he said, stringing the moments together, riding the words as they sledded from his mouth, not sure what to say until he was hearing the words, too. And God, it felt right, yes-yes.

  “Michael,” she said emphatically, “I’m not leaving.”

  “Why?”

  Another firecracker string of gun bursts, this time closer, this time accompanied by a strobe, visible through the dark glass. He heard Jopek laughing.

  Jopek called through the closed door: “Searched all the rooms, Holly! It ain’t here!”

  “What ‘ain’t here’?” Michael said to Holly . . . and in that moment, something flashed inside his head: Hank crying and saying, What if the captain can’t find it?

  “What are you looking for, when you go on these ‘missions,’ Holly?” he said. “What is it you and Hank want the captain to find?”

  All the defensiveness, evasiveness, and forced friendliness that she’d used that morning evaporated from Holly’s face. Right then, she was just the self that she had shared last night. The kind-but-frightened self. “I . . . don’t know what you mean.”

  What does she want more than anything? “Is it your dad? Is he still somewhere in Charleston?”

  “What? No, he’s not in the city,” Holly said, and Michael knew by the surprise in her voice that she was telling the truth.

  “Whatever it is, I can find it for you, too. I can help you better than Jopek, he’s an idiot—”

  Holly snapped at him, “Stop! You’re not perfect, either, Michael! You got scratched!”

  He physically drew back, his face stinging with surprise and hurt and shame. Suddenly, all the good things from their time together deflated inside him.

  He could see that she instantly regretted her outburst, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

  “I’m not trying to hurt you,” she said. “Honestly, I didn’t think you’d go through with this ‘leaving’ thing. I like you, Michael: you’re funny and you’re kind, and one day, I swear to God, you and I will go on a road trip together. But . . . you aren’t a soldier, and nothing you say to me right now will turn you into one.”

  There was a kick at the stockroom door and it flung open and the sight that was revealed made Michael feel, for a moment, sick, because Patrick peered through the night-vision scope that Jopek had unclipped from his gun, and Patrick held it with only one hand. Because his other hand was holding Jopek’s.

  A thready blue mitten in Jopek’s fingerless, blood-spattered glove.

  Jopek’s happiness was so ugly.

  “Roll ’em out, doggies,” Jopek said, and Patrick laughed, “Arf!”

  Michael spluttered, trying for time, “I gotta use the bathroom.”

  And Jopek said, “Funny guy,” and Patrick delightedly nodded: he is! The two of them left the counter, went down the makeup aisle. Holly followed, avoiding Michael’s eyes, arms folded over her stomach. Disappointment rose in Michael, and yes, anger, too, but there was something else, worse, something he could immediately name.

  He felt . . . betrayed.

  Cloud cover had resumed outside. The day was the color of gravestone.

  The silhouettes of Patrick, Jopek, and Holly had stalled at the glass, gazes angled upward.

  Michael jogged toward them. “What’s going o—?” he began.

  “They’re. All. Hiding,” hissed Jopek to Michael. His eyes were wide. And for the first time since he had met him, Michael thought he was seeing Jopek’s true feeling: fear.

  Jopek said: “Rapture.”

  A mound of shadow, on the roof of the Little Caesars facing them across the parking lot, shifted. And it sprang.

  The assassin rose perfectly between LITTLE’s faded-orange T’s.

  The obese man wore only camouflage pants and a plain black T-shirt. He had swept-back, coal-black hair. And in that infinite moment as he raised his weapon and prepared to unleash war, Michael recognized the assassin. He was the Weeping Man from Rulon’s church: the worshipper who had decapitated all the corpses his priest said did not deserve to rise from the dead.

  The Weeping Man now held a grim cross, a metallic crucifix, hallelujah hallelujah.

  No: a crossbow.

  Michael curved his arm around Patrick’s chest and fell upon him like a fire tarp, both of them still tumbling as the first arrow burst through the wall of glass like a sword through water, and Michael felt—oh God!—the sting.

  And there was blood on the floor, blood on the floor, whose . . . ?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Something had cut him below the left knee. The arrow’s triangle head was pinned to the polished tile floor. Beads of red on its tip. The thin, black shaft above it nodding lazily.

  Heyo, lost some health points, he thought with a brain that seemed roughly seven miles away from his skull.

  From far away: “—back!—fall!—”

  And then, pain.

  Shot! he thought. I’m shot!

  I let myself get shot!

  The world snapped back in sudden, close high-def. The blood. Holly hiding a couple feet away, behind the spinner rack of sunglasses.

  “Michael,” Patrick said, half underneath him, and Michael registered something in his voice he did not like. “W-w-w-why is—?”

  Why is we under attack, why is there a man with a weapon above the midget who says Pizza pizza!? Why is there more shadow-people standing up on that roof now and even more coming through the parking lot, and Michael, why is you lying there like a frog pinned to a bull’s-eye?

  Another arrow screamed toward them with a building whistle, flying through the hollow air where the glass had been. The projectile struck the checkout counter and ricocheted up, smashing an endcap of cookie jars.

  Jopek was
crouched at the counter, his back against the candy bar racks. Now he roared up like a freight elevator, firing a sweep of bullets that splashed out several windows, then aiming, truer, single-shot, at the assassin.

  The C in CAESARS popped, a shattering bulb.

  A second shot, and Weeping Man went twitchy. He pawed his neck, shaking his head, tipped forward off the roof, and he all at once was shaking his head in denial of his free fall. Hallelujah, hallelujah.

  A thud.

  “Faaaaall baaaaack!” Jopek shouted. It was a good thing he was shouting. There were, after all, a half-dozen men screaming on the Caesars roof. There were shadows on four-wheelers and motorcycles speeding across the twilit parking lot. And there were Bellows that had finally navigated through the maze of tanks and Hummers and were now only fifty paces away from the Walgreens storefront.

  “FAAAAALL!” the monsters called.

  Yes, fall back. Oh, awesome idea. Oh, put on your boogie shoes, Michael. “Scoot, Bub,” Michael said, desperately pawing backward into an aisle, afraid of standing . . . and finding he was unable to stand. In this same moment, Holly was crawling toward him, using bins of discount DVDs and water bottles as barriers. She reached Michael and, her face very close to his, looped an arm around him to help him stand.

  She said, “Upsy baby.”

  Patrick said, “Michael got hurt?” Genuinely surprised.

  Oh Jeezus. Oh shit. “Nah,” Michael gulped nickel-plated adrenaline, “takes more than that to—”

  “Oooooh NOOOOO!” Patrick squealed, for he saw Michael’s blood.

  Just a little blood on the floor, but Patrick’s eyes popped. The color shocked out of his flesh. His hands flew to his cheeks, pulling and pinching. It was the look of a boy who has watched Superman enter the ring and get his head knocked off his shoulders. It was the face Michael had seen in his own nightmares: his little brother’s horror as the last shreds of his world disappeared from under him, leaving only the abyss.

  Michael, this isn’t how you promised it would work!

  Patrick burst into tears. Oh God no no no no no! “I’m fine, buddy,” Michael said.

  “It’s the cheaters, isn’t it? It’s them!” Patrick tried to punch himself in the leg; Michael grabbed his wrist, feeling sick.

  “FALL BACK, I GODDAMN SAID!” Jopek hollered—but all the same he also laughed as bullets stitched across the counter and sent wood-chip shrapnel flying around his face. His expression burned with insane good humor, his eyes alive like black fire ignited by the chaos. “Got a wound, Mike? Suck it up before I give ya one to grow on!”

  The barrel of his gun bladed to Michael’s face.

  Michael, shot with terror, managed to scramble to a stand.

  Jopek’s gunslinger furnace-face laughed and laughed and winked.

  “Got this ’un covered, so you know.” He cocked a casual thumb over his shoulder, indicating the battle.

  He loaded a new clip, spat out tobacco.

  And then Jopek trampolined, leaping up, landing two-heeled on the platform of the checkout counter. He blew out the last of the window glass with a machine blast from his gun. And standing there while war swept closer across the parking lot, the captain hollered with huge, wordless joy. Captain Jopek looked, for all the world, like the king of this apocalyptic land. Not just a Gamer, but the Master.

  “Do you need help?” Holly asked Michael. She was looking at him—and at his furious expression—with a kind of horrified awe, as if she had seen him take off a mask, show a hidden face.

  No. No, he didn’t need help. He could get going just fine now.

  With his sobbing brother’s hand in his own, his leg barking every step, Michael stamped a fast course up the aisle. Eff you, he thought, not just at his leg. Eff you very effing much. Ignoring Holly’s questions as she followed him into the shadowy stockroom of the pharmacy, he stepped over a Bellow with blue trousers that the captain had killed. Set in the far wall was a red exit door and Michael rammed his shoulder against the closed door with anger rocketing in his blood, acidic and hideous and good.

  And Patrick said the thing Michael had, for the last few weeks, most feared: “M-M-Michael, I want to quit!”

  Sounds of building battle, the captain firing, roaring at invading men. Not too long before the Rapture got inside. Poor Captain.

  “Michael,” Holly said uncertainly. Whamp!—He slammed his shoulder against the door. “I don’t think we should go outside—” Whamp!

  Screeching rust, the door flew into the snow-blinding alley. Fearing another volley of arrows, Michael yanked the door closed; a moment later, cracked it again. He heard men running past the end of the alley:

  “Where is the boy? Rulon swore the captain would bring the boy.”

  “Rulon swore we’d be saved after the sacrifice last night. Rulon can lie. . . .”

  “Don’t say that. God, please don’t say that. . . .”

  “The boy”? Rulon thought Jopek was bringing “the boy”?

  Me?

  Oh my God, Michael realized. Jopek knew the Rapture were going to come here!

  But—if he and the Rapture were supposed to meet here for Michael, then why were the Rapture attacking?

  Maybe because they’re insane, Michael. Because they’re freaking insane.

  The neighboring roof on the other side of the alley was clear. There was no one in the alley. Go now, Michael thought. Game time, final round, you bet it is.

  “Michael, ohhh, I’m quitting, I want to time out. . . .” His brother’s eyes were going glassy and he shivered, like a freezing puppy in a towel. He’s going to throw up. He’s going to start screaming. And then the fun really begins.

  “I know you do,” Michael reassured calmly. He stroked Patrick’s hair, and had an image of a ticking bomb inside the soft case of his brother’s skull. “But there’s no reason to cry, dude. We just got tricked. He knew this was going to happen.”

  “Wh-what?” said Patrick. “Who knew?”

  Michael listened to his heart thuds. “The Betrayer knew,” he said.

  Patrick’s eyes went wide.

  Just his eyes going wide, that was all . . . but they weren’t glassy. They were interested. Michael, for the moment, had stopped the bomb.

  “The what?” said Holly.

  Several motorbikes sped past the mouth of the alley, perhaps fifty feet away. Rapture people. Firing with the army’s guns, entering Walgreens through the front doors, boot steps on the shattered windows, shouts of confusion, coordination—

  —and then Michael’s play at redirecting Patrick’s anxiety and remaking his world didn’t matter.

  Patrick struck himself on the ear with a tiny, terribly mean fist. It sounded like it hurt a lot. He whimpered and scrunched his face and began to sob, powerful and hoarse. Patrick was through trying to hide it: he was five years old, and exhausted, and Freaking.

  Michael felt fury at everything.

  This isn’t supposed to happen.

  Use the rage, thought Michael. Just use it!

  Something inside him told him to look back at the corpses the captain had killed in the stockroom. On the edge of the light, Michael saw the one with dark-blue trousers. He went back and felt for the cop’s waist. Found something metallic and cold. A silver revolver, six-chamber, pebble grip, blue in the twilight.

  “Oh please, let’s go,” Patrick said urgently. His brow was feverishly popped with sweat. “Pleeeease.”

  “Holly, hold my brother for me.”

  “What? Where are you going?” she replied fearfully.

  “To get the Hummer.”

  The shopping center was being raided, yes, but the raiders hadn’t set up a perimeter, hadn’t even blocked the exit at the traffic lights. Haven’t you assholes ever played Halo? If he could just sneak through the lines of tanks, he could bring the Hummer back here and drive away. He began to jog. “And then you’ll get all the time-outs you want, Bub, I promise—”

  “Don’t lie to him anymore, Michael.
”

  Michael stopped, turned back to her, feeling a hideous wonder that the girl he’d ever come closest to having a date with was now a second away from imploding his brother.

  “We cannot leave. Michael, they will k-i-l-l the captain.” She looked at Patrick, then back to Michael and hissed, “They will kill him in real li—”

  “Holly, shut the hell UP!”

  He might have given away their position to the Rapture.

  “Look at Patrick,” he spat, leaning to her. “I don’t understand it, I don’t, but stay here if you want. I just want you to know something: Jopek will keep doing pointless ‘missions.’ Jopek knew someone was coming. He’s doing it for a couple reasons, maybe, take your freaking pick. One: he’s an idiot and a bad soldier, which is probably true. Two: he hates me, which is ridiculously true.

  “Either of those is enough to make me want to haul a-s-s, but there’s also the biggie:

  “I think Jopek is insane.”

  For a second, he thought he’d convinced her. He truly did.

  “But—” she began.

  “Then I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” said Michael. He picked up the quivering collection of nerves that was his brother. I didn’t even get Atipax in there. Stupid, so stupid.

  And Michael was almost to the end of the alley when a thought, a simple thought, stopped his boots in their snowy tracks: Mom wouldn’t get in the car.

  I . . . I can’t do this, he thought. I can’t leave her. Oh God, I just can’t.

  What Michael did next did not come from yes-yes: it came from the desperate roar of his mind that was telling him, hurry, leave, now. Something inside seemed to slap back, No!, but the gun rose in slow motion.

  Holly went stone faced, the desperate venom in her eyes snuffing out: a jack-o’-lantern, smothered by a gust.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “You’re kidnapping me?”

  “Holly, it’s—it’s for your own good, okay?” Out loud, that sounded so grossly Father Knows Best. He began to say, Trust me, but stopped. That was what he’d said to Bobbie.

  “I’ll get you someplace safe, Holly. I can do it, I swear.”

  But he never got to the Hummer and escaped, not right then.