The End Games

by T. Michael Martin

  “Bad bad guys,” Patrick hissed viciously. His eyes glittered with vengeance. It was not just fury at someone who wasn’t playing The Game right: it was something beyond childhood, it was full hatred, grown-up’s hatred, and utterly without innocence.

  Patrick hooked one arm over the edge of the basket so that he could look to the ground, aiming the bright plastic gun down to the lead creature, as if to shoot Cady Gibson with a make-believe projectile from “the weapon” the Game Master had given him.

  Michael thought, That’s just a toy, Patrick. Just a toy.

  But then a secret understanding, both horrible and wonder-struck, fit into place inside Michael’s heart, like clockwork.

  It’s not a toy!

  Michael grabbed Patrick’s wrist, steering Bub’s weapon upward half an inch at the last moment. He did not even know why; it was simply as if something were directing his hand as much as he guided his brother’s.

  Patrick’s finger tensed, and he roared with the biggest voice Michael had ever heard him use:

  “REACH FER THE SKYYYYYYY!”

  And Patrick pulled the trigger of his flare gun.

  A cry of light; a sparkler scream.

  A fiery red contrail blazed forth from the barrel. The flare gun launched its glittering charge across the West Virginia night, a fizzing, dazzling, screeching light, like the racing sparks of a fuse strung across the world. Yes, like the fuse of some unimaginable bomb.

  The flare struck Cady Gibson.

  There was a sudden floating fire-rose on the dead boy’s chest, like a hideous fake, where a heart would be.

  That was when the mountain blew up.

  “OH SHI—” Patrick screamed as the first flame pyred out of the mine.

  Michael grabbed at Bub and Holly, and threw them both down to the floor of the basket as it happened. He had been wrong about the “toy” gun, but Holly had been right about the gas: it was there, packed within all the subterranean nooks and catacombs of the mine, like patient, invisible dynamite. And as the flare ignited it, there was a tide of fire that even the monsters could not outrun.

  Roaring yellow-red light filled the world, making Michael blind and deaf. In the storm of heat, he found Patrick and Holly and hugged them to him, to let them know that he was there. And they hugged him back, to let him know that they were, too.

  AFTER THE END . . .

  After their balloon had hurled and pitched in the sky like a bouy in a hurricane; after the earth-tearing chain of explosions stopped; after the light and heat began to fade; after Michael and Holly sat up, stunned silent but asking Did we just . . . save the . . . ?

  After Patrick gaped at the flare gun in his hand like a kid blinking at the fist that has finally fought back against the bully, but also somehow accidentally killed him . . .

  After Patrick burst into tears that Michael and Holly could do nothing to stop . . .

  After the wind carried them into the night, and the flame-filled quarry began to look no larger than embers. After Patrick finally, simply exhausted himself and fell into an uneasy sleep. After Michael and Holly rigged the burner-handle down with a rope from the canvas bag labeled CAPTAIN H. C. JOPEK, which Holly had grabbed from the back of the Hummer (the bag had safety flares, tourniquets, a blanket, radio, “space food,” batteries, and a Playboy magazine, which Holly rolled her eyes at and flung out of the basket). After they asked each other, Did we just end this? I mean, is that possible—if all the Shrieks came home, did we just kill them all? Holly said she didn’t know, that she really doubted it. But Michael saw the hope in her eyes. He recognized it, from what he almost felt in his own heart.

  Maybe all the Shrieks did die, though, Holly said. I mean, since Cady was the thing that changed them into Shrieks, right? So maybe the only Things left are . . . like, Bellows that are scattered and by themselves.

  She added: ’Cause it couldn’t have been all of them, right?

  Right?

  After the moon rose and the storm calmed and they drifted through a star-shot sky, wondering at the world that was slipping by in the smooth—silent?—darkness far below their feet:

  Holly told Michael they should sleep in shifts. Michael tried to say he couldn’t sleep, and for a while he couldn’t; it was too quiet up here. So he turned on the army radio Holly had brought, and the white noise at least relaxed him. And he did sleep. And, same as always, dreamed of Mom.

  It was Christmas morning, and thick, white flakes were falling past his window in a lightly moaning wind. He could smell pine, and the cookies (lemon) Mom had left for Rudolph. As he leapt from bed, he was aware of the cold on his ankles at the ends of his too-short pajamas. Mom stood at the bottom of the stairs. Her hair was drawn down in front of her face, and Michael had a terrible feeling that if she looked up, she wasn’t going to have any eyes.

  On the bottom stair, between her feet, lay a gift topped by a looping red bow. Inside the box, a sheet of paper, with a single word. And when Michael looked up with a question on his lips, Mom had disappeared. He was scared, lost-in-a-department-store scared. He came to realize that the howling outside was not a wind, but people at the windows. Gray-faced people. He shouted, but Mom wouldn’t answer. Finally, he looked at the paper.

  The word on it read:

  Pocket

  Snow.

  He could feel snow.

  Michael lay in the cold, then sniffed. He opened his eyes, looking around, brushing the flakes off his nose with the back of his hand. He wasn’t totally surprised to feel tears there, too.

  Purple light, over the rim of the basket. Snow falling gently. He could see the pink underbellies of clouds that told him it was almost sunrise—though the clouds were a lot closer than usual. He watched one that looked like a lowercase t drift past. He started to sit up, but noticed Holly’s head lying against his shoulder, her eyes closed, her breath steady. Sleepin’ on the job, lady, he thought, grinning. He hesitated a second, then thought, Well, it’s okay ’cause she kissed me first, and he leaned in and kissed her, quick and light, on the edge of her lips. Man. Seriously: so soft. Holly shifted in her sleep, the side of her mouth tugging into a little half smile.

  Michael thought: pocket.

  Pocket? What’s in my pocket?

  Patrick was sitting across from him, looking at the wicker floor, his back against the opposite wall, one knee drawn to his chest. In his hands, he held the vial that Holly had stuffed into Michael’s pocket in the First Bank of Charleston.

  The ropes creaked overhead. They drifted. Patrick looked up at Michael, then back down at the wicker floor, his lips twitching and pursing. He seemed to be gathering something to say in his head. After perhaps ten minutes, he said softly, “There’s no more Game Master, is there? Everyone can cheat now, huh?”

  Michael watched him, unsure how to respond. He lifted Holly’s head from his shoulder, positioning it gently against a corner. He scooted toward Bub, and the question within Michael was: What lie should he try to assemble for Patrick? But he realized he did not know. Right then, sitting across from his little brother in the waking sky, Patrick seemed a kind of mystery to him. How did you save yourself, Bub? Michael thought wonderingly. How did you fall into yourself and come out? I tried so hard to save you; I did my best. But I didn’t control this.

  “Do you think the Bellows cheated where Mommy is, too?” Patrick asked.

  Michael felt his pulse, his breath, searching his stillness: the old automatic habit, waiting for some secret aspect of himself to present him with the Truth about the future of his Game. . . . But nothing came this time, of course. That was all over.

  What if Mom did make it to Richmond, and she’s still okay? some small part of him thought. Is that possible?

  After the pain and terror of all his own false predictions, Michael tried to push down the idea. Jopek had said the Safe Zone in Richmond was overrun.

  But Jopek had lied about a lot of things. I don’t “know” for sure that things are good . . . but maybe that doesn�
�t necessarily mean that they’re bad. I don’t know, but I’m going to keep going, anyway. And maybe that was hope.

  “I . . . I dunno, Bub,” Michael said honestly.

  Patrick nodded, his lips pulling into his mouth. He didn’t blink, but a moment later, the half-light in the sky lit the trails down his cheeks. He clenched the vial tighter in his small hands. How had the vial survived all Michael’s falls since the bank? I mean, How? For some reason, Michael thought of what Patrick had said. The deer. The deer knocked ’im down. Bobbie could have been right, Michael supposed. There could be something watching over them. But if there is, he thought, I don’t think I could understand it in a billion years.

  “If I give this to other Good Guys,” Patrick whispered, “it’ll really make everything all better?”

  Michael found himself smiling. “I think it will.” He searched himself, and he found, with a relief like warm wind, that he wasn’t lying. Or, he didn’t think he was.

  “I m-m-miss Mommy,” Patrick said. “She’s a good . . .” Patrick blinked, frankly confused. He struggled to find the word. “She’s good,” he finally decided.

  Yes, she was good, Bub. Is. Maybe is, Michael thought. Holly was right: Mom’s weak. But not just weak. Yeah, Bub. She’s also good.

  Patrick stood up, placing his hands on the edge of the basket, and looked out. Holly shifted again and cough-snorted in her sleep. It was kind of ridiculously cute.

  Patrick whispered, “Girlfriend, now?”

  Michael blushed a little. Nodded.

  “Wow,” Patrick said, pretending to be amazed. “I have a girlfriend.”

  “Bub, jeesh!”

  Patrick shrugged with one shoulder. Laughed a little. I think he’s going to be okay. I can’t believe it, but I think he really is. The Game was fake . . . but this was real. He really got past The End.

  The first pale, fragile yellow of dawn was touching the mountains and the valleys. A water tower loomed through the fog, drifting before being vanished. Silos, delicate roads, a toy-size tractor in the white. Look at the world. Wonder: What is this place? It seemed like a new earth, scarless, their sphere to shape. And even if Michael had learned enough to know the lie in that, he couldn’t help but find it beautiful.

  And he wasn’t scared. Liar, his mind whispered. Well . . . okay. Okay, he was scared, but just then he had a feeling he’d never quite had before: like the fear didn’t encompass him. Like he was other things, too.

  “Michael?” whispered Patrick.

  “Yeah?”

  “Low-five.”

  Michael tried to slap his hand. Patrick pulled away. “Too slow,” Patrick said.

  Michael laughed. “Yeah, I get that a lo—”

  But he stopped when they both heard the sound. A hissy sort of sound, and his first thought was that the hot-air burner was running low on gas.

  But the sound had shaken Holly awake: it was that loud. And when it happened again, she didn’t look up toward the burner. Her eyes slid down to the canvas bag. To the long, rectangular shape inside it. Shaped almost like an old phone.

  Holly whispered, “What the?”

  Patrick said, “Did that just—?”

  The man on the radio, cutting off the white noise that had sent Michael off to sleep, said: “—broadcast zone—”

  Michael, Holly, Patrick: gawping.

  It was Patrick who lunged for the handheld walkie-talkie. He pounced down so hard, it was almost funny: the balloon basket swung a few feet underneath them.

  “—zone, please respond—” said the radio. The voice coming through the waffle-fencing on the speaker sounded crinkly, far-off, a tin-can sound.

  Patrick pushed down the red SEND button on the side of the walkie, with some effort. “Y’hello, baby?!” he shouted into it.

  “Patrick!” Holly called, her voice shaky with tension. Patrick smiled up at her and, despite the suspense of the silence that followed, he looked pleased at making her laugh.

  “Bub, here, let me.” Michael took the walkie from Patrick’s hands. Oh my God. Holy freaking crap. Is that a person? Is it really?

  No. No, you don’t know. It might just be a recording. Don’t, Michael: don’t get your hopes up.

  But: why not? some other part of him said, his hands shaking. Seriously: why not?

  And he was bringing the walkie up to his mouth—there was a brief burst of static and feedback—when a man, on the crackling speaker, sounding shocked, replied, “Hello?”

  Michael’s finger eased up from the worn, red rectangle SEND button.

  The moment hung in the air between them all. The sun peaked over behind a mountain; Michael squinted, feeling dazed. The voice of a stranger, snatched from the air and sounding from this thing in his palm . . . it was like magic.

  “Repeat: Is anyone there? Come in.”

  Holly put her arm around Michael’s shoulder and squeezed a couple times.

  “Repeat: Sir, are you there?” said the man on the radio. “Over.”

  Michael, gulping, stared at the walkie. . . .

  And pushed down SEND.

  “Y-yeah.” His voice felt fragile, like glass. “Here. Uh, over.”

  He had barely let up the button when the walkie exploded, “Son of a GUN!”

  Michael pictured a young guy falling back in his chair, hands flying to his headphones with the amazement of a man who has just heard a miracle. “Whelp, you—wow!” said Radio Man, as Holly laughed in wonder. “Hell-oh! Hey! Pal! It is good to hear a voice out there in radio land! How the hell are you?”

  Still nervous, Michael smiled a little. “Compared to what?”

  He heard Radio Man guffaw: “Do I hear that? I sure do!” Muttering in the background of the other end of the line. Michael pictured other people gathered around Radio Man’s machine. He . . . he imagined soldiers.

  “Ah, sir,” the walkie-talkie said: a more official, man-in-charge tone. “How many are in your party, sir? Over.”

  “Three,” Michael replied. It felt dizzying, the truth. “You?” Grinning hugely, Holly mouthed to him: over. “O-over,” Michael said into the walkie-talkie.

  There was a pause across the airwaves. And then Radio Man said, “More,” with his smiling voice—his beaming voice, actually. “More than three.

  “Three out there in radio land,” he said disbelievingly. “Oh, boy. Thank G . . .” For some reason, he sounded nearly like he was going to cry.

  “Hey, pal, your signal’s going out; let’s get your location info before we lose each other, okay?” said Radio Man after a moment. “I’ve just got to ask: Who are you?”

  Who are you?

  Michael closed his eyes.

  And while he rode the wind that carried them into his unpredictable dawn, he pushed down the SEND button, and answered.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The End Games is a work of fiction that contains some nonfiction elements. For example, Charleston and virus mutations really do exist, but for the story’s sake, I’ve taken creative liberties with both. Other aspects of the book are invented whole cloth, including: Southern West Virginia Coal and Natural Gas, Coalmount, Atipax, and of course the existence of Bellows.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Here is a truth about a novel (and perhaps especially a debut): The author’s name is emblazoned on the jacket, but the story within is a kind of topographic map of his past and his heart—and neither of those things can formed in isolation.

  I’m grateful to many, many people for their guidance and companionship in creating my particular map. Here are their names, with a few special explanations at the end.

  Bridgeport: Scott Faris, Brendan Gibat, Heidi Griffith, Charles and Joanna Kovalan, Amy Lohmann, Alice Rowe, and Jeff Toquinto.

  Family: Everyone, but especially my grandparents (Bobbie and Jack Crouse, Tom and Louise Martin), my wonderful second family (Rick, Abbie, Will, and Billie Layne, and Bill and Jeanne McNamara), my siblings (Matt, Molly, and Patrick), and my uncle Jimmy, who inspired my love of fear
in the first place.

  Film school: Ted Ferris, Jordan Kerner, Laura Hart McKinney, Bill Mai, Joseph Mills, Tom O’Keefe, Laura Hauser O’Keefe (who is also a talented designer/illustrator who helped me with my website), Dale Pollock, Ron Stacker Thompson, and Andrew Young. Most of all here, though, I owe a profound thanks to Dona Cooper, whose generosity of spirit and wisdom shaped my understanding and love of storytelling.

  At HarperCollins: Alessandra Balzer, Molly O’Neill, Viana Siniscalchi, and Jon Smith.

  Misc. people who have been nice/inspiring to me: Pilar Alessandra, Leo Babauta, Brene Brown, Brook Bishop, Jack Canfield, Father Harry Cramer, Paula Friedland, Seth Godin, Michael Hyatt, Harry Knowles, Robert McKee, Ammi-Joan Paquette, Carson Reeves, Anthony Robbins, Craig Skistimas, and Gary Vee.

  New Leaf Literary & Media: Danielle Barthell, Kathleen Ortiz, Pouya Shahbazian, and Suzie Townsend.

  Winston-Salem: Tom and Sarah Jane Bost, Tanya Gunter, Caleb and Emily Masters, Ed and Pat Mayfield, Michelle Reed and the Bagel Station Crew, and Jamie Rogers Southern.

  Writer friends/supporters: Bryan Bliss, S.A. Bodeen, Joshua Ferris, Ridley Pearson, Stephanie Perkins, Carrie Ryan, R.L. Stine, and Nova Ren Suma.

  YouTubers who inspired and/or supported me: Ed Bassmaster, Elmify, LiveLavaLive, BertieBertG, Link Neal of RhettAndLink, and the VlogBrothers.

  And, especially:

  My editor, Donna Bray, who I think is literally ingenious. Donna’s insights, patience, and unbelievable care made me transcend everything I’d allowed myself to hope The End Games could be. Thank you so much, Donna.

  My mom and dad, Kim and Mike Martin, whose steadfast support of my writing gave me the strength to fight monsters in my stories (and my self).

  My little brother, Patrick Martin. The “Michael and Patrick” in this novel are not us, but being the older brother of an awesome kid who loved zombies as much as I did made The End Games possible. You rule, Bub.