The End Games

by T. Michael Martin

  People say they have hope for the future, but no they don’t. Because hope wasn’t about the future, not truly. Hope was: make me feel better now. Hope was: tell me, this second, that I’ll be all right. Hope was: tell me I don’t have to be different, but things will be. Hope made you feel better by letting you feel a false future.

  Michael forced himself to think of Patrick. He looked away, back down the street, at the nearing Bellows—now almost a dozen of them.

  God, where was the Rapture?

  “When the captain asked me today how to take the antidote to make it work,” Holly said, “I said I’d only tell him if he gave you a dose first. I’ll tell you how to make it work, right now, but please—promise me something.”

  Michael whispered to the dead.

  They heard it. They echoed the message: the next Bellow picking it up, casting it to the next and next, carrying it away like a series of undead tin-can telephones strung across the city.

  Heeeere! The sooooooldier heeeeeeere! Baaaannnk!

  —Shooooot soooooldier!—

  “Promise what?” he said.

  “That you were lying last night. About there being no other soldiers that can take us to Richmond. Right?”

  She touched him again, looking at him like she had in the middle of the night, watching the Kanawha River, that bare and desperate confession of want for Before.

  He did not say: I never saw soldiers.

  He did not say: Jopek told me we’re alone.

  If she needs hope to get her through this, fine. The hope’s false, but without it? She won’t trust me to get through this, and we won’t get any future.

  He said: “Y-yeah. There are soldiers.”

  Holly’s brow knitted, and she nodded, and tears of relief shimmered to her eyes, and Michael remembered then, from the pure unhidden gratitude on her face, how much he liked her. And as she looked at him with trust, he pretty much hated his life.

  Am I doing the right thing? Michael thought. Am I?

  “Thanks,” Holly breathed shakily. “You’re a good guy.”

  I lie for the same reason as you, said Jopek’s voice in his head. Because I want to.

  And now Jopek was coming out of the plane. Michael put the hood of his space suit back on.

  “You have to inject it at the site of the wound,” Holly whispered to Michael urgently, and spun around to face Jopek.

  “You said you’d be right back,” Jopek growled from the airplane door.

  Blocking the view from Jopek with her body, Holly grabbed Michael’s hand and gave it two squeezes.

  Michael thought, with a painful ache in his heart: Facebook update—Michael is IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH A GIRL HE CAN’T STOP LYING TO.

  “I lied,” Holly replied.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  They both did, easily enough.

  Jopek asked what the hell was taking so long and they told him what he needed to be told. By now the Bellows’ imitations of Michael’s message had blended into each other, and there was only a sound of fire in the alley where the mines had blown.

  Through the airplane and out the cockpit, Jopek kept the gun on Michael.

  Back in the lobby of the First Bank of Charleston, with the gun still aimed at Michael’s belly, Jopek approached the tunnel and spied down it. Holly stood halfway between the two of them, as if still on neither team, her eyes nervously cast down. The last of the day streamed in through the high, stained-glass windows.

  When are the Rapture people going to come?

  Michael stared at the sun-struck colors in a window to his right. Words began to form inside him. Please, just let us get out of here. Let me out of this. He realized that he was praying . . . and as he did, the glass darkened. A shadow had passed over the window—a movement so momentary it might have been imaginary. Until it stealthily moved again.

  Michael’s mouth became cotton.

  The sniper setting up, he saw in his mind.

  The human form in the window shrunk, lying down. Hold B to enter Prone Position, he thought wildly.

  Michael was going to kill a man.

  The idea slit him, and thoughts he could not stop rushed through. It wasn’t him pulling the trigger, but Michael was going to cause Jopek’s life to leak from him. He had to, he knew that. But the idea still made him sick.

  The shadow on the glass grew a line: the dark limb of a barrel. The shadow snuck across the floor of the bank, laying itself behind Jopek’s feet.

  I’ll get the cure. I’ll keep everyone safe.

  Not everyone, his mind said. You. You never keep everyone safe. You can’t even keep one person safe.

  Michael swore he heard the click of a safety snicking off.

  Patrick’s not safe yet. But he will be. In the end.

  Holly moved in front of Jopek just as Michael was closing his eyes against the coming fire. Her dark expression told her motive instantly: she was furious. She was going to demand Jopek help Patrick, or else.

  Won’t work, Holly! You do not KNOW HIM!

  Michael found he was holding his breath.

  Michael dived for her, catching Holly at the waist, and they flew through space.

  A second thud followed their own: a brick, tossed from outside, splashing through the window.

  The brick landed in a crash of color.

  Jopek spun. Alarmed, not yet comprehending. He looked at them. At the splayed rainbow. His stare then trailed up into the new shaft of sun. It was blazing him, transforming his face and, for one single second in that light, he looked almost like an angel.

  The first shot came with a rocket of sound, a solid crack that made Holly kick out her feet on the floor beside Michael in a dance of terror. Shock registered on Jopek’s features as the floor tiles at his feet blew up in a storm of particles.

  Jopek had been blinking blindly in a spotlight . . . and the shot hadn’t come close.

  Jopek leapt out of the dusk light. In one single movement, he rolled into a crouched shooting stance, aiming for the high gunman through the shattered pane.

  A second shot rang. And what followed was a sound Michael had never heard before:

  Jopek’s pain.

  The captain’s face contorted with naked surprise. His rifle fell, discharging. The bullet had taken him in the left leg, midway up the shin. The spot became a sudden rose.

  DID IT! Triumph, frightening and powerful, roared in Michael.

  Jopek tried to pull his sidearm pistol from his belt, but the silhouette fired again and Jopek was grabbing a curve of blood that traced down his screaming face.

  Captain Horace Jopek collapsed.

  Enemy Team down, Michael thought madly. I did it, he’s down, Enemy freaking down!

  Michael’s blood towered up his throat and seemed to drive him onto his feet and he thought, BRB, Holly, even as she screamed, “Wait, Michael, wait!” Jopek’s pistol had skidded across the floor and Michael grabbed it and put it in his spacesuit pocket, and he ran and dived into the tunnel. Darkness ate up his vision through his panting-fogged faceplate, rocks sliced through the knees and palms of his suit; now gun sounds from the sniper spiraled after him and he flinched and something shifted in the stone layers overhead: a chattering of rock crashing down. Michael squeezed forward, scrambling insanely and, a second later, shot out the other end of the tunnel.

  The bank was a pharaoh’s tomb.

  Bills and coins in every direction, dust and debris covering all. Brass-rimmed nameplates still sat on rows of parallel desks, winking dully. On one desk, a water-bird paperweight dipped down and up, down and up. Electricity came and went in pulses, desk lamps and ceiling lights crackled on and off; computers kept booting momentarily before the power shorted, the Apple start-up gong! echoing like some eerie electronic doom-song. Flickering light, lots of shadows. Oh, too many.

  Holly’s voice from the other end of the tunnel: “Michael!”

  “Come on, Holly! The tunnel’s safe!”

  “I—but—” she said.


  Why wasn’t she just coming?

  She’s just afraid, he forced himself to think. She’ll come. No time to wait. Move!

  “Bub!” he called across the shadowy lobby.

  Only his echo. Where did they even keep vaults? Basement? Some kind of manager’s office? Behind the counter—

  Yes!

  “One-two-three!” Michael called as a precaution, but he realized he didn’t know if the Shriek would echo as a Bellow would. A banner over the counter read BEFORE YOU CHANGE YOUR DREAMS, GET A SECOND OPINION! and Michael dashed, hurtled over the counter. He landed awkwardly on his side, tried to pull out the pistol in his pocket; it got caught in the space-suit fabric. He grappled desperately for another weapon, came up with two things, a plastic capsule used to zip cash through pneumatic tubes to drive-thru customers, and a pen on a chain; he chose the pen, wielded it knifelike, whipped around, and saw nothing.

  Except the vault.

  Tens and twenties and hundreds eddied over the dozen pneumatic bullets that lay between him and the vault at the end of the tellers’ lane. The vault door was no heist-movie prop: no great steel circle, like a stone rolled in front of a cave. But it was steel, and larger than Michael, with a spoked wheel dead center like a spiked eye.

  He said, “Hey!” padding to his feet. “Hey-hey-hey! Hey, Bubbo-Gum!”

  A large dent on the vault door—an impact crater—twisted his reflection. There were thin scratches marring the door, too. Shriek scratches! It tried to get at Patrick in there! Bub’s really here!

  Without thinking, Michael threw himself into the door with everything he had.

  It didn’t even buck.

  He fell back from it, shoulder throbbing.

  His panting fogged the faceplate.

  Michael wiped at the faceplate madly, realized wiping the outside would do nothing, felt for the suit-back, and tore the hood off messily, the zipper screaming.

  He threw himself against the door again—

  —and it wouldn’t open again. It was like a door in a video game that was not designed to be opened.

  “Bub!”

  There was no reply, save a dry clicking behind him. Michael tensed. But it was only a mini rock slide on the debris.

  Calm it. Calm calm calm.

  But in his brain he saw: Patrick, clawing the door, wheezing ’cause there wasn’t air in there, fingertips bleeding. How long had Patrick been in there? Michael guessed, Eight minutes and forty-three seconds. Excellent skill, very helpful.

  He threw an inarticulate yell of rage, but it was more than a yell, was more like a protest. He had done everything: he had rescued Patrick through a series of Hells, had talked Holly to his side, he’d killed a dark genius with a sniper he’d conjured from nowhere. He had mutated their future.

  And now, now Patrick was in there, with no air to breathe—

  How, said a small voice, did he get in there?

  It was as if someone—or Something—had dropped the thought into his head.

  Patrick couldn’t have opened the vault. The door was too heavy.

  The Shriek hit the door and shut it, he imaged.

  PULL IT open! You have to PULL!

  The vault door swung open lightly in Michael’s hands.

  Not only oxygen had been sucked from the vault: time had, too. As the door swung open, a terror, beneath the neat rows of safe-deposit boxes, was revealed eternally. It was far worse than Cady Gibson. It was Patrick. His face was blue, pinched. He wasn’t breathing.

  This wasn’t real. It wasn’t true. His brother wasn’t sitting here, dead.

  Because Patrick was pretending. His candle was not snuffed, Michael insisted.

  I know it’s not real, he thought. I know. I know it’s not, I know I know—

  Michael cried, “Please, Bub—!”

  —a gasp—

  Patrick’s eyes blew open, his breath flying out.

  Michael, quite quickly, slid against the door, to the ground, began to laugh and cry. . . .

  It was like Patrick was shooting up and out of a pool after a breath-holding contest. He bent forward, his hands on the floor, coughing. “It got hardta . . . hardta . . . breathe . . . . I held it in,” he said. Hacking still, he flexed his biceps over his shoulders, his orange toy gun in one hand. Look at me, World’s Awesomest Holder of Breath and Kicker of Undead Badonkadonk.

  Even though Patrick wasn’t looking, Michael gave a thumbs-up. He wiped his eyes, his fingers coming away shaking, but he couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “Guess what, Game Master?” Patrick said. “Guess what, I found—Hey.” He raised his eyes and saw Michael. If it was possible to cough indignantly, that was what Patrick did. “No. Out.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re not s’posed to be here.”

  I just saved his life, he thought, and he’s acting like I pooped on his b-day cake.

  “Get out,” Patrick repeated, getting to his feet.

  But Michael had just seen something.

  There was something else in the vault with them.

  There was a clear plastic tunnel stickered with BIOHAZARD. The tunnel led to a zip-up plastic door. Past the door, a metallic halo secured in the ceiling draped a pyramid of heavy plastic biomedical sterile tarps. Banks of ultraviolet lights, flickering, gave them the look of arctic ghosts.

  Within the tarps was a laboratory. Steel tables and charts and tubes and a gyroscopic machine sporadically spinning beakers. A moment of joy, then a sense of unreality washed through Michael.

  It’s too small.

  That was it. This lab was too small. Was it . . . like, a decoy? How could the hope of every possible future fit in here? It couldn’t contain the importance.

  It wasn’t big enough to be the . . . the, like, Last Level.

  Don’t you know yet, Michael? It doesn’t look like the Last Level because this isn’t a game.

  “No you doooon’t,” said Patrick, singsong. Michael stopped; he hadn’t realized it, but he’d been walking toward the transluscent tent. “You can’t geeeet it in theeeere.” Patrick was teasing, as giddy and scared as if he were about to launch a tickle-attack. Why?

  He put his orange gun in his pocket.

  And from another pocket, like a magic trick, he pulled a vial, sticky with lint. The cure.

  It was no thicker or longer than a number-two pencil. The reddish liquid within glimmered.

  Michael’s blood seemed to try to leap through his skin, but he conjured calmness on his face.

  “The Game Master said only I had to get it, not yooouuu.” Patrick was delighted, because he thought The Game was almost over. He just had to get that vial back to the Game Master.

  So get it from him. Charm him. You’ve done that crap a million times.

  Michael smiled. “Duuuuude.”

  “What?”

  “C’mon.”

  “Nerp.”

  Michael shrugged, acted like, Hey, let’s make a deal, scooped up a bill from the floor. “How’s ’bout for a hundred bucks?”

  Patrick reached in his own stuffed pocket. “I already got, like, a million.” Which was true.

  “Cha-ching! Can I borrow some?” Michael took a cautious step toward Patrick. “I’m hoping to get butt implants.”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s really inconvenient, because I already changed my name to Booty-Meister Mike.”

  The joke seemed to slap the playfulness from Patrick’s face. Suddenly, his brother wasn’t laughing. Wasn’t holding anything on his face except a mask of anger and determination.

  Despite the madness of the moment, it stung. When you got right down to it, it kind of broke Michael’s heart.

  “O-kay,” Michael said. “How about just a little . . .” He peeked over his shoulder, pretending to be making sure they were alone. He looked back, winked. “Just a little sip? I’m just thirsty.”

  “You’re tryin’ to trick me!”

  “Patrick!” Guilt-trip. “C’mon, Bub. I do solids for you.
”

  “Pfff, like what?”

  Michael, very briefly, wanted to slap Patrick. Like save your life, he thought, like run away for you.

  “I . . . gave you the last s’mores Pop-Tart,” he finished lamely.

  Patrick gave a dismissive, “So?”

  And somehow that was too much. The heat burst in Michael, bitter and fine.

  “Don’t be an asshole, Patrick.”

  Patrick didn’t recoil or gasp. His face squinched down, becoming like a hard stone. His lips pursed white. It was the first time he or Michael had ever—ever—been mean to each other. To Michael, the anger felt like good poison. Just because you’re screwed up doesn’t mean you aren’t a brat.

  Then, as if Patrick couldn’t hold the hardness anymore, his face became his own again. “Michael, I’ll tell.”

  And with that sentence—said as a pitiful beg—Michael realized that he had no chance of getting the cure from Patrick peacefully. What Michael saw now was the same thing he had seen in Holly’s eyes when she asked if Michael had been lying, in Mom’s eyes sometimes: Patrick trying to hold on, for dear life, to a lie.

  He won’t let go of The Game. Not even for me. He can’t. It’s the only thing that makes sense anymore. Michael felt a crush of sympathy for his brother . . . and hate toward himself.

  “Just . . . please, Bub,” he tried, without hope.

  “I’m. not. ‘Bub,’” Patrick said emphatically. “I’m a Gamer. You’re a Betrayer.”

  “Your brother, too.”

  “Not right now,” Patrick said.

  Pull the gun out of your pocket and point it at him, Michael thought, so he thinks it’s The Game. It’s what the Betrayer would do. Just point the gun at him and take it! But he felt instantly sick with himself.

  You can just run. You can tackle him and get it. But he would break the vial; it was so small, and—

  And now an image floated up in him, like a gift.

  More vials. There was more cure. Had to be.

  Patrick sensed Michael’s thought and threw up his hands, panicked. “Wait wait, you sure you don’t waaant it? Here!” He put the vial of cure between his feet. When Michael ignored it, Patrick nudged it a little closer to him with his foot.