“Damn, Cady had one hell of a midnight snack,” Jopek said to himself, high-stepping over the corpses. The Bellows nearly carpeted the road, at some points stacked two or three on top of each other: Michael saw a bloated old woman on top of a priest.
He wished he could ask Holly for an explanation of why this had happened. If what she’d said before about viruses was true—if they only changed in ways that helped them survive—the idea of Cady slaughtering carriers of the same disease . . . it didn’t make sense.
Michael didn’t like it. Oh man, he didn’t like it at all.
But what exactly do you know, his mind hissed at him, about things working out the way you thought they would?
“No sign of Cady this mornin’, but there’s a few reg’lar Bellows left roamin’ around,” said Jopek. “And I bet that those Rapture folks are just a mite pissed at us after our little shootout with them yesterday. The Bellows riotin’ and all that last night might’ve kept them off for a little bit, but I doubt for too much longer. Let’s get going.”
“Get going where?” asked Michael.
“You ain’t figured it out?” Jopek said. “The only place left to search in the city.”
You still want to “search”?
Jopek pointed up the road.
The ruins of the passenger jet lay shattered and enormous and grim with snow. It was the same jetliner that had attempted to escort one hundred souls, including Bobbie, to salvation, but been betrayed by its own pilot and fallen from the heavens. The jet lay on the ruptured landing strip of the road, its nose disappearing into a building labeled FIRST BANK OF CHARLESTON, its fuselage and wings pointing at the building like an arrow.
Jopek said, “The last place that ol’ secret lab could be.”
“In the plane?” Patrick murmured.
“Inside the bank, Bub,” said Jopek, and Michael cringed at the use of Patrick’s nickname. “We’re gonna go make a withdraw.”
“Wait—what? What do you mean ‘lab’?” Michael said, looking up at the face of what had survived of the front of the bank above the point where the crashed plane’s nose had burrowed in, like a dog’s snout in a hole. It was an old building, with three stories of faded, flat-red brick—the kind of building that seemed to say, And this is where we put our especially boring adults.
But then two ideas crashed together in Michael’s head: his suspicion about why Jopek seemed so intent on his “rescue missions” in the obviously empty city . . . and Holly saying that the Centers for Disease Control were working on a cure, with a hidden lab located in Charleston itself.
Brain-stunned, Michael said, “There’s a cure.”
“Could be,” said Jopek.
“You want it.”
“Sure do! Hey, sounds like a real nice way to end The Game, don’t it? Mean ol’ world. How else can you really be safe, huh, Patrick?”
“So . . . why don’t you get it?” Michael said.
I mean, you’re brave. You’re smart. You’re . . . you’re better than me.
Then Michael said, realizing: “You don’t have that many bullets left. And you don’t know how dangerous it might be.”
“What do I look like,” said Jopek, throwing his head back, barking laughter, “some kind of idiot who thinks they see the future?”
Cure.
Dimly, Michael understood that he should have been blowing kisses, tap-dancing, singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” But the shock wouldn’t let him.
I didn’t see this coming, he thought. Idiot. Stupid. Why didn’t I see this coming?
“And we can go to The End after we get it. Really, right? It can make the Bellows go away, right?” Patrick asked Jopek anxiously.
Michael tried to calm himself. If a cure is in there, he told himself, I get to CONTINUE. For the first time, that felt so stupid, imagining his life through the lens of a game.
“Wait. I get to use the cure, right?”
Jopek signaled for everyone to follow him. Just like old times.
“Have to think about it, you being the Betrayer,” Jopek replied, nodding reasonably. “But y’all know, I’m a generous man.”
“Will it even . . . work on me, though?”
He realized that the question was really for Holly.
Holly’s mouth set, like a doctor about to give bad news. Her gaze flicked to Jopek, and she said, “Yeah. Of course it will.” Michael understood, from her uneven tone, that she did not know if that was true. He wondered fleetingly whether Holly was trying to deceive Jopek (by making him think that Michael was safer than he really was), or deceive himself (by encouraging Michael with the false hope of a cure). Then he realized that it didn’t affect the facts of the cure, anyway. And also, he thought, I’m pretty damn tired of trying to figure out Holly’s lies.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Michael walked into the jetliner with the point of Jopek’s AK-47 pressed into his back, Patrick and Holly somewhere behind.
He had always wanted to go on a plane—there had been class trips; he couldn’t afford them—but he didn’t want to be on this one, because it reminded him of those pictures of the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean. It was a dead place. Oxygen masks in the darkness dangled like nerves; snow hissed through the crimson-stained seats on a breeze that stank of smoke and flesh. It was easy to imagine Cady pouncing from the floor . . . or the ceiling.
“So it’s scary. Be scared. Use it,” Michael tried to pep-talk himself. His breath fogged the front of his space-suit faceplate. He tried to wipe the fog away; couldn’t; it was on the inside. Claustrophobia enwrapped his chest.
“Say somethin’?” asked Jopek.
Michael shook his head. He hadn’t tried to yes-yes himself outside the jet; he did not know if it would help. But now, as he walked through this dark, Michael understood that he was either going to grasp yes-yes or fall totally into despair. He was either going to believe that there was some truth to the Game Master’s promises that such a thing as salvation existed. This is the last chance I’ve got to save Patrick.
Yeah, keep tellin’ yourself that story, Mikey. But if any of that yes-yes crap worked, you’d be out of here by now.
Michael pinched his leg through his space suit, hard, forcing himself into the moment.
The captain’s gun light found the door to the airplane cockpit. He prodded Michael with the barrel of the assault rifle. Michael opened the door. Wire and copper tubing sprang from the ceiling of the cockpit like Medusa hair. The nose of the plane had been chewed off in the crash.
The pilot seats were situated not in front of instruments, but in front of nothing. Where the controls should have been, there was a new world.
The enormous lobby of a great bank.
High ceiling.
Marble floors.
Framed posters showing smiling people.
Brick walls soaring with stained-glass windows, through which daylight streamed.
As his eyes adjusted, something else became clear: the bank had been divided into two sections by the airplane’s unplanned touchdown. The collision had brought down a section of wall, maybe fifty feet from the airplane, so that the ceiling of the higher floors had collapsed inward.
Rubble rose, floor to ceiling. The ruins were stacked so tall and tight that they had effectively sealed off the rest of the bank from the entrance area.
“So you see why this was last on the list,” said Jopek, his voice hushed. “But there’s a tunnel to the other side, sorta.”
Emphasis on “sorta,” Michael thought. He saw the entrance: a small mouth in the rubble at floor level, dark and jagged with debris. Just big enough for him, the tunnel shot way through the ruins to absolute blackness.
Just big enough for him, Michael thought. By “chance.”
But he suddenly had a dreadful feeling. It was that clockwork-syncing feeling again, yes, that sense of the world aligning for him. But this time, it felt like a dark clockwork, a wicked clockwork, conspiring against him. It was irrational but Michael th
ought: Cady’s in there.
No. No, there was a whole city of other places for Cady to be.
Michael felt his breath and tried to look back at Patrick, but Jopek pushed the gun into Michael’s cheek and forced his gaze front again.
“Time’s a-wastin’,” the captain said.
Michael nodded, and said, “Yeah. Okay. Here I g—” But then he realized that Jopek had not been speaking to him, because Patrick replied, “Yes, sir,” took a little flashlight from Jopek, crouched down at the tunnel, and said, “Clear.” Jopek stared blankly at him, then replied, “Oh. Five points.” Then Patrick brushed his nose with his sleeve, and began to crawl into the tunnel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“What are you doing!” Michael cried. He lunged for Patrick.
Jopek’s hand seized Michael’s shoulder. “You watch yourself, boy. Don’t you get called for interference, now. Bub, you let us know what you find.”
“Bub, do not go in there!”
Patrick gazed down the tunnel another moment, then turned around. He had never looked smaller: his mouth so tiny and pink, his nose so slender. He got those features from Mom, but right now Michael saw something on Patrick’s face that he had never seen on their mother’s: a stubborn determination.
He’s trying to be brave. He wants The End. And he’s not going to stop until he gets it.
“You said you would go in with Michael, Captain!” Holly shouted.
And that broke the pause: Patrick wriggled forward, the snow-stamped bottoms of his sneakers slipping away.
“Why did you do that, Jopek?” Michael said. “Why the hell did you do that?”
“He volunteered,” Jopek replied in a “who me?” voice. “He’s used to getting through tight places, he said. Kinda got the impression he didn’t trust you to do it.”
The feeling drained from Michael’s face.
“You didn’t say Patrick would go by himself,” Holly breathed.
She was so smart. She had once seemed so good. So how could she still be surprised?
Michael spun from Jopek’s grip. He got two steps toward the tunnel before Jopek shoved him and knocked him sprawling, rubble-pebbles poking through the chest of his suit. “Pay-trick!” Michael called desperately in his Game Master voice. “Ten points for comin’ back right now! Ten p—”
Jopek, towering over him, a boot on each side of his chest, cocked the AK. “You play nice, Mikey. Now, your brother’s safe in there. There ain’t no monsters in there, just calm down—you hear anything talkin’ back to us?”
“What did you even freaking bring me for?” Michael spat.
Jopek bent, offering Michael a hand up. Three drops of sweat glided down his brow and fell on the barrier over Michael’s mouth.
“’Cause I need a backup in case the retard gets killed.”
Michael roared, his fist flying to hit Jopek’s belly. Jopek slapped away, no problem, grinning like a man at a carnival game.
Patrick’s voice, flattened through the tunnel: “Maaaade it!” he said. “You’re right! There’s something in h—”
Then, a shriek.
The shriek of Cady Gibson.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Michael waited to hear a cry of pain. He waited for the snap of his brother’s bones. And he waited to hear Patrick shouting that it was Michael’s fault.
There was a second shriek, sounding like it had the night before: a knife tearing into this world from another.
Rocks clattered in the tunnel.
Patrick screamed.
Running footsteps. And an enormous, metallic shutting-slamming sound.
Then Patrick’s scream stopped. Echoed. Stopped echoing. And Michael suddenly was on his feet and running.
A boot flew out and sent him spilling. He flipped onto his back, ready to punch through Jopek. But it was Holly who had tripped him. What are you doing, Holly?
Michael got to his feet. “No, wait wait, that Thing is in there!” Holly said, grabbing him, rough-handed.
“Patrick is in there!”
Tears of relief shimmered in Holly’s eyes. “I think he hid, though. Didn’t you hear that slamming sound? I think Patrick got into the vault.”
Michael knelt, peering in the tunnel. He could see flickering, fluorescent light. No child-sized lumps of clothing. No tossed-off shoe. No blood. And no movement. As if the Thing—the Shriek—had left . . . or hidden.
Jopek pushed Michael aside and threw a lit flare down the throat of the tunnel. “Patrick! It’s the Game Master, bud! C’mon back!”
Silence.
“Yeah. The vault. Sounds like it,” Jopek agreed. He sighed in relief, almost moaned, and Michael knew it was not a relief that Patrick was alive. It was relief that his mission had not just been screwed up.
Patrick was in the vault. Locked away. He found a Safe Zone, Michael thought, and felt a clutch of love.
Michael tried crawling toward the tunnel again, but Jopek grabbed him.
“Let go!”
“You’re going nowhere till we’re sure that Thing’s gone.”
“Because you need a backup?” Michael spat.
“Yeah,” Jopek said simply.
“How long, exactly, do you plan on waiting, sir?” Holly spat with mock respect.
Jopek glared. “A while.”
There were choices.
Patrick. Patrick.
“Then I’m going outside,” Michael said.
Jopek scoffed, “Bulls—”
“I’m going to start a fire in the road. To keep Bellows away. You said there are some Bellows left; we’ve made enough freaking noise to bring all of them here. Look, do you really want to waste your ammo on them before we have to? Do you really think I’m going to try to run away and leave my brother?”
Jopek actually had to consider the last question.
“Have a ton of fun,” Jopek said.
Holly tried to ask if she could come, too, but Michael was already heading for the fuselage, his mind stretching, trying for a plan, desperately, oh God, don’t let this be The End—
He was ducking through the fracture in the fuselage when Jopek barked: “Faris!”
He turned, prepared to see Jopek raising the gun.
An unlit flare batoned through the air.
Michael caught it against his chest, and let his heartbeat devour the airplane.
The Game ends with stopping a Betrayer, right? I knew that, Michael thought. Jopek and the Rapture are each other’s Betrayers. Let’s see what happens if they try to stop each other.
I don’t like what you’re planning, Michael. The Rapture tried to kill you, too, remember?
Yeah—but I’m thinking they want Jopek even more than me, after he killed all those people yesterday.
They’re still the bad guys!
But that doesn’t mean I can’t make them change teams for a while.
“Michael?” Holly called from behind him as he marched out into the street.
She emerged from the plane, her face all confusion, scrunched against the wind.
Michael grabbed at the back of his space suit, found a zipper, unhooded himself. He got a cinder block that had smashed into a candy store window, a swirly lollipop stuck on the bottom. “What are you . . . ?” said Holly. Tears glittered in her eyes.
You want to cry now?
Michael hurled the block over a chain-link fence into a nearby alley, where it tipped end over end, drunkenly strolling toward the cluster of mines.
Boom. One land mine lit, exploded, sending up a mini-rocket of fire and sound.
“The Bellows are coming. Down the road. Be careful. Michael? Hey?” Holly’s hand touched his shoulder, lightly.
“I don’t care,” Michael said, spinning on her. “I don’t care what you have to say, Holly. I don’t need your help—I don’t want it!”
She cringed.
Michael threw a stray boot and he got two mines in the chain-linked-off alley; double kaboom; the explosive fire leapt up and the sound r
an past him, traveling across the city. It was his signal to the other people in town. But where were the ears to hear it?
Michael checked the horizons.
Look at me, he thought. Calling in backup. Please look at me, Rulon!
“I know I . . . don’t deserve you talking to me right now. I know that,” Holly said, wiping her tears clumsily.
Look! he begged. LOOK AT M—
“I was wrong to trust him, Michael. I should have left with you last night. I was just so goddamn wrong—”
“Yeah, I was pretty wrong, too. I thought you cared about Patrick and me,” Michael spat.
Holly shook her head. “I—I do! I care a lot. I was trying to help you guys. I just thought that Jopek . . . I thought we all had a better chance with him. I screwed up, but I didn’t see any other way, okay?
“Do you remember when I told you that my dad was a pharmacist?” Holly said.
Michael walked toward the four or five Bellows that were staggering toward him and Holly from fifty yards away.
“What are you doing?” said Holly.
“Holly, just shut up. You’ve messed up enough—”
“My dad made the cure, Michael!” she said.
Michael blinked. “What?”
“I’m trying to tell you that he was the leader of the CDC team, and he made it! And—and—the day everything got overrun, we got separated and so many of the buses out of town got swamped. Hank and I didn’t know what happened to our dad—we didn’t know if he got out safe, or if he was bit. I don’t even know if the CDC had had time to get the cure out of the city.
“Hank and I were alone. Jopek said he’d help us find the lab. He said we had to keep it a secret because he was the leader. I know that was stupid, but I just wanted to get it so, so bad. I needed to hang on to that. I needed—”
“Jopek’s training, yeah, I remember.”
“No. Yeah,” she said. “But . . . I needed hope, Michael.”
Michael didn’t question whether the disgust he felt was real then; for that word, hope, was hideous on his heart. Mom lived behind a hope of her life changing; Bobbie hoped to run her fingers over her husband’s smile one more time; the Rapture worshipped their undead hopes and let them devour them. But hope was a weak wish, Michael knew now: a dream from which you wouldn’t let the real things wake you.
The End Games Page 25
