The End Games

by T. Michael Martin

  Above, one of the hall’s chandeliers was pitching, glittering wildly, the glass eerie music, clawing drags of light on the walls. There was something on the chandelier. Something like a clot of blackness, a moving thing, and hanging upside down.

  There was a dead boy above them.

  A dead boy, that was all. A living corpse. Something he had seen a thousand times. But Michael’s fingertips suddenly went numb with terror. His stomach flooded with ice. The yes-yes shattered in a single, flying instant.

  The boy hung above them, knees hooked on the chandelier, like a kid on playground monkey bars.

  No. That’s not real, Michael thought. No, no, no, my God that can’t be real!

  Because he recognized, with one glance, the boy’s crooked, poor-kid haircut.

  Cady Gibson, one month dead, still in his funeral suit, peered down at them, teeth peeled back into a smile like an arc of fiery bone.

  Can’t be right. Doesn’t work like that. He just died in a coal-mine accident! How did he come back? HOW DID HE COME—

  “Is that the Betrayer?” Patrick whispered.

  The boy, inverted, swung from the light, spearing through the dark. He struck the wall with four quick limbs . . . and he did not fall. He clung to the wall; perched, the all-dark lamps of his eyes on them.

  Doesn’t work like that!

  Sections of his blond scalp hung loose in flaps. His brow was thin enough to see the skull. In his left temple was a ragged hole, perhaps the head wound that had taken his life when he fell in the mine. And the reason that he seemed to smile was because his lips had rotted off. Hi! Wanna play? I’m new here!

  KILL IT! Michael thought. His gun was rising, rising. You have to kill it NOW!

  Cady opened his mouth and out exploded Hell.

  Two summers ago, Ron had lit a bottle rocket in an empty beer bottle that tipped over, and the firecracker screamed a hot bright slash past Michael’s head, close enough to scar his ear. That scorching cry was the only thing Michael could compare to what now came from this kid’s gray, quaking jaws.

  The lenses of his machine-rifle scope shattered from the shriek. Michael recoiled, and at the same instant, involuntarily yanked the trigger: fire burst from the end of the barrel.

  The creature dodged on the wall, flitting gravity-less from bullets like a snake inside a nightmare. His shrieking was a trapped siren.

  The creature leapt over Michael, and landed on someone two times his own size. “Off!” Hank screamed in a hysterical mixture of revulsion and horror. “Off Jesus get off shit shit get it off get it off!” He spun wildly and jerked in a dance of terror.

  The creature twisted upon him like flame.

  Patrick grabbed Michael’s waist. “What the?!”

  Holly cried out, lunged to help: stopped, then screamed her brother’s name as if her heart might break.

  The creature’s jaws snapped. Hank began to weep.

  Michael placed his finger on his trigger again, knowing it was too late, knowing that Hank was bitten, that Ron and Jopek had been right about him: he was too weak. But then a miracle happened.

  As Cady arched his jaws for the bite, Hank, spinning, spinning, snarled Cady’s legs.

  He hurled Cady at the wall. The creature flew, flailing like a beast kicked off a cliff.

  Hank crowed, apparently as much in surprise as in triumph, and upon his face there was a savage joy.

  Cady met the wall, but instead of the impact shattering him, he bent his legs to catch the momentum. Elegant. Cady launched back like a swimmer making a turn at the end of a pool: he launched back at Hank, jaws first.

  Insanely, in that same moment, Jopek was running at Michael like a fullback, head down.

  “Hey-back-get-back!” Michael shouted and raised the rifle and Jopek kept coming anyway, and Michael fired over his head. And Jopek stopped.

  “Michael, shoot it!” Holly screamed. “Shoot it, MICHAEL, PLEASE SHOOT—”

  The creature landed on Hank and roiled and hissed on him like spilled acid. “NAAAAAAA—” Hank screamed. He stumbled backward at the creature’s impact, and his head struck the wall with a crack! loud enough to make Michael feel sympathetic pain.

  The monster went blurry with speed and it was hard to tell where Hank ended and where the monster began—

  —feel your blood—

  —and a thousand movie scenes of hostage standoffs flashed in Michael’s brain—

  —feel it—

  —each of them ending with the cop reluctantly lowering his gun.

  Oh eff that, thought Michael.

  The rifle slammed into Michael’s shoulder like a rapid fist.

  His firepower was enormous, his aim flawless. Ropey blackness slung out of Cady as the bullets shredded his little-boy’s suit. The fusillade threw Cady off of Hank, and for one incredible instant, the boy-monster corkscrewed in the air. Cady struck the wall, and with a shriek—like a steel rod being fed through a buzz saw—he threw back his head, impossibly far. Unlike any other Bellow, Cady seemed to be experiencing pain, and there was nearly human shock and rage in his voice, as if he was furious that his plan had been interrupted.

  I guess that makes us even, you asshole!

  Michael kept firing, torturing the monster-boy.

  Hank had kept his head together just amazingly well: he’d ducked down to the ground to avoid the bullets the moment Cady was off of him, hadn’t even flinched when some of Cady’s viscera splashed on him. “Hank! C’mon!” Michael shouted behind the rifle.

  Hank stayed perfectly still.

  “Hank, over here, now!” Holly cried, moving toward Michael and Patrick. Michael had the monster seized in the bullets now, but what about when the clip ran dry? And Jopek was only maybe ten feet from Michael, and maybe he’d attack, too, and—

  — and Hank didn’t move.

  Blood trickled from the back of his skull and spread into the lanes between the marble tiles.

  “No. Oh, Christ, no,” Holly breathed.

  The gun stopped quiet in Michael’s hands.

  Hank had been dead since his head had struck the wall.

  Cady Gibson stared, smiled, smiled, and he looked like a boy who had wandered across an executioners’ firing line and thought it sort of tickled. Michael’s eyes locked with his—its—dark sockets, and chills flew through him like black wings. Because, beyond the nine-year-old eyes, he saw some poisonous truth flash:

  This Thing was newborn . . . and it was very, very old.

  Cady Gibson shrieked one final blast, and this time the windows blew out, like glass curtains. The monster leapt out the window and vanished into the white void of the storm. And as the boy’s shrieking faded off across the night that had promised Michael freedom and future, Michael could not help but think that the sound seemed to become laughter—yes, laughter, at him. . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Patrick, Michael thought. You have to tell Patrick it’s okay. That you’re not scared of what just happened. You . . . you have to breathe, Michael. Breathe. Rule one, breathe.

  Now, look down, champ. Look down, and see Patrick disappear into himself. Look down, and see your brother Freaking. Because you were too late. Because you forgot the Atipax. Because Game freaking OVER—

  Michael looked down.

  His brother was watching him. But Patrick was not terrified. The cry of the impossible monster still rang, but Patrick was not the panting and quivering kid he had been in the pharmacy. Bub was, sort of, smiling. As if he was just slightly bewildered that a boy had somehow clung to the wall and gotten one of the Gamers.

  How the hell is Patrick okay? Michael wondered distantly.

  Patrick said, “You just shot the Betrayer, right?” And that was the moment Michael saw the numbed desperation in Patrick’s strange expression. “Hank got hurt but we’re okay because we play right, right?”

  He knows that Hank got hurt. Maybe even dead—if Bub even totally understands what that means. But The Game still makes sense to him.
For now, it still does, because he thinks Hank just didn’t follow the Instructions. Even with Patrick’s limited understanding of the world and his need to believe in The Game, Michael didn’t think that this deception would last long. And even though Michael knew that he’d had to build The Game’s illusions for Patrick’s safety, he still suddenly felt the dreadful power of his own deception. He feels better when someone is “logically” dead than when someone is just “cheating.”

  Oh God, Patrick, what the hell kind of world have I made for you?

  Patrick repeated, this time a little shriller with need: “You got the Betrayer, right?”

  Which was when Michael remembered that Jopek was still nearby. He whirled toward Jopek, raising the rifle to his shoulder. The world puckered at the edges of his vision; a bitter yellow heat spiked up his throat. Oh, I think I’m in shock, he realized with dim interest. I think I’m going to puke.

  Somewhere behind him, Holly sucked a gasp, like she’d forgotten to breathe, too.

  Jopek wasn’t running at him like he had feared. He was kneeling at Hank’s body—Hank’s corpse, whispered Michael’s mind, and his stomach rolled. Jopek’s expression was a battle surgeon’s look, a face of compartmentalized concern that was, somehow, everything in the world grown-up and strong. It said, Trust me; you said, Always.

  With his face angled toward the fallen Hank, Jopek raised his blistering eyes. Shoulda listened, Mikey, they said, hideously triumphant. Oh yes, you shoulda let ol’ Jopek stay in charge.

  Not going to puke! thought Michael fiercely. Not in front of you.

  “No-no-no-no-no,” Holly whispered. She stood alone before the open threshold of the snowing night. He pictured two pixelated characters, Holly and Hank, walking toward the bright block letters that read THE END. They had made it this far together by virtue of their grudging love. But as they make their ending move, there comes the shriek of an invisible ax to tear one of them away.

  Holly shook her head: slowly at first, then speeding. Her dark hair swam and slapped across her face. No, no, the motion seemed to say. Doesn’t work this way.

  “Hey-it’s-okay!” called Patrick brightly, his crescendoing distress causing uncharacteristic emotional tone-deafness. “Hank just played wrong, pff. We played right, huh! Michael said there was gonna be a Betray—”

  “Holly, I am so sorry,” Michael interrupted. He moved slowly toward her, gun still raised. He wanted to touch her, to hold her; most of all, he wanted to shield her eyes from the sight of her brother, the blood pooling under her brother’s head and mixing with the black Cady-core that had splattered on and around him. But he had to keep the bead on Jopek. “I am so sorry that Hank . . . that he—”

  Holly sucked her lips into her mouth. She’s going to freak, Michael saw. And maybe she’ll be too upset to leave. He felt a flash of guilt for analyzing her grief.

  Holly asked as if to herself, “Is he gone?”

  “Yeah—God, I’m sorry.”

  “Got shot, that’s my thinkin’,” muttered Jopek. He stood from the body, brushing his hands, shaking his head as if in mourning.

  “I thought maybe he was going to get bit, but . . . I didn’t think he hit his head that hard. . . I—I didn’t think he—”

  Patrick tugged Michael’s waist. “We always play right, huh?” he whispered, with a building urgency, his voice beginning to quiver. “That’s why we’re awesome, huh? Low-five, huh?”

  “Is he going to come back?” Holly said to herself.

  Michael didn’t think so—Hank had died only of his head wound—but he still pictured himself having to shoot Hank in the head in front of Holly to keep Hank from possibly rising again. His throat clenched sickeningly and he had to fight back a moan of dread and despair. That was too much. He looked at Jopek and silently told him, You killed him. You. We should have been gone.

  Then he said, “Holly, we’ve got to go.” Holly looked past him, far-eyed. “Patrick? Okay?” Nothing from either of them, and Michael thought: I’m going to have to touch Hank. I’m going to have to go through his pockets for the keys. “You guys go outside, I’ll be there, we have to go before that Bellow”—he stopped; calling it a Bellow somehow didn’t feel right—“before that . . . kid comes back.”

  “How did that kid come back?” Holly asked suddenly, watching Hank. Tears spilled from her eyes, unblinked.

  “The ceiling?” offered Patrick.

  “How did it come back?” Holly repeated to herself. “He wasn’t bit. When things were getting bad, the CDC checked every goddamn coroner’s report, my dad was helping, and they dug up any body that had been bitten. I remember my dad told me the CDC checked Cady’s body too, to make sure his head wound wasn’t a bite from a Zed. I’m saying Cady wasn’t bit, this isn’t possible, this can’t be real!”

  She jammed a shaky hand through her hair. “Changing,” she said. “The virus is changing.” She sucked a single sob, a low, humorless laugh sliding from her.

  Michael didn’t like the off-kilter edge her voice had. “Well, that just means even more that we should go, right?” he said quickly, double-checking Jopek as he did. “Since it’s changing?”

  Holly nodded fervently. For one single second, she looked like a girl who has not been sledgehammered across the mouth with grief. “I guess I’m just kinda like, ‘how?’” she said, her voice cracking. “You know? How did it happen? I guess . . . it’s just . . . I just . . . how goddamn it did it happen!” she cried. “HOW DID MY BROTHER DIE, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN, THAT KID NEVER GOT BIT! THEY CHECKED CADY AND THERE WEREN’T ANY BITES, THEY CHECKED AND ALL THAT KID HAD ON HIM WERE A COUPLE GODDAMN SCRATCHES!”

  And, as if by command, Holly’s voice cut quiet.

  And Michael did not understand why.

  He did not understand why Holly’s hands plummeted. He did not understand why her eyes flicked to Patrick with sudden and heartbreaking pity. He didn’t understand why Jopek’s lips twitched, as if to contain a smile.

  And then—

  —my neck scratch—

  —Michael did understand.

  “Oh my garsh, what a shame,” Jopek said softly.

  “Stay,” said Michael. The gun slipped in Michael’s grip. His fingers were suddenly jellied with sweat.

  “Naw, I ain’t your puppy dog.” Jopek grinned. “Not no more.” And took a stride closer.

  “Stop,” Michael said, finding the trigger.

  Patrick slid closer, asking, “What’s a-matter?”

  “Holly—Holly, tell Jopek.”

  “What?” she replied. Her voice was soft and quivering.

  “Tell him, tell him the truth, tell him my scratch looked fine.” But his stomach iced. “A little inflamed,” he remembered her saying.

  Jopek took another stride closer. Michael double-checked the safety.

  “Captain, wait,” Holly said, obviously torn. “He’s—he’s probably fine. . . .”

  “Probably?” Michael sputtered. “Scratches can’t do anything to people!”

  Michael was very very very aware of his pulse beating in his neck.

  “But like the lady said, Mikey: the virus is changin’.”

  “B-bull! If anything was going to happen to me, it already would have.”

  “Took Cady a month to come back,” Jopek said. “It could be the same for you. ’Course, with the virus changin’ it could happen right now, couldn’t it, Holly? Yes indeedy.”

  “What could happen right now?” said Patrick, confused.

  “Holly,” Michael said.

  But there was silence, except for Jopek’s clocking, snake-patient approach.

  Jopek saw the weakness on his face, and lunged. Michael made his own move without thought: he aimed the gun above Jopek’s head, a warning shot. He pulled on the trigger.

  Holly screamed. Jopek’s eyes widened and he tensed to flee.

  Click, the gun went.

  Michael, dreamlike, blinked at his weapon. His hand floated out to the gun’s slide. He pulled on the slide
to feed new bullets from the magazine. And fired again.

  Click. Empty.

  Patrick realized something was wrong, and shouted, surprised, “OOOOOHHH!”

  Michael said, “Please don’t—”

  But Jopek lunged again, saying absurdly, “Ha!” and Michael hurled the empty weapon at him and was down the hall, was racing down the marble stairs that circled the rotunda, when the captain grabbed a pistol from Hank’s corpse.

  “NO!” Michael heard Holly cry out. “HE’S NOT CHANGING, CAPTAIN, DON’T SHOOT H—”

  Marble chips exploded to Michael’s right as he reached the bottom stair.

  He flinched, screamed, and in between the first shot and the second he had time to pivot toward a tour information booth, had time to think, Where am I? The second shot rang, and something like a high-speed needle tugged the shoulder of his coat and he shouted again and spun reflexively. Don’t lose control of yourself, don’t, don’t! He saw a pair of shadowed governor statues ahead and ran toward them. He had smiled at them two days ago and thought this zone was the safe End; now Michael thought, Where the hell am I going to?! just as a third bullet hit a mark not two inches wide of his ankle. TURRRRN! his mind screamed, TURRRN!, and his whole skull felt soaked with terror and his vision pinholed and shimmered, and he tried to feel his blood and instead tripped on his own frantic feet and splayed face-first and struck his jaw on ice-cold marble. So this is what it feels like to lose control. Michael scrambled desperately up and into a hallway to the left of the statues just as Jopek’s fourth shot struck the statue’s hand like some unthinkable stigmata. Michael cast one last look back up at the ring of the rotunda above, over the railing of which Captain Jopek smiled like a portrait painted on a ceiling of a cathedral, like a man having the time of his life. Michael wasn’t dead, only because Captain Jopek didn’t want him dead. Not yet.

  Michael dashed blind into the dark hall.

  Where am I going to turn into a Bellow?

  This isn’t happening, he thought. I was too careful! I played too well for this to happen! Seriously, it’s wrong, Holly was wrong, I don’t even know if I’m infected!