The End Games (16 page)

The captain didn’t turn, but Michael saw his shoulders tense.
Is he angry?

Bobbie seemed to notice. She put in, kind of quickly, “Yes, that sounds about right
to me.”

When the captain looked to them, his face seemed affable enough.
Imagined it.
“All right, Old Bones, let’s get you to bed,” he said. Bobbie laughed politely. “Why
these walkin’, talkin’ dead targets only come out to party in the nighttime, though,
I’ll never know.”

“Pssh,”
Hank went, like he was a 24/7 party animal.

“It’s their pupils. When you die, they stop closing in response to the light,” Michael
offered.

Holly looked impressed.

“Respect to the scientist!” said the captain.

“Where’d you learn that?” asked Hank.

I watch entirely too much NCIS,
Michael thought. “I read, tons,” he replied, shrugging.

As they filed through the gate to exit the kids’ playground, Michael wound up walking
near the rear of the pack with Captain Jopek. Everyone loaded into the Hummer, but
when Michael looked back he noticed that the captain had paused a few feet away. He
was gazing at something. Michael tried to figure out what it was by snapshotting the
world.
The footprints in the snow. The city in suspended animation around them.
But the captain’s gaze was oddly far away—as if he were watching something beyond
the scope of Michael’s sight. “Well, that’s the secret, ain’t it?” he murmured.

“The secret?” Michael said.

“The way to enjoy this world. Figure out a way to live forever.” He looked at Michael,
winked. “Know what I mean?”

Uh, no.
“Sure,” Michael said.

But he wasn’t going to let one odd moment spoil the afternoon. In the last glow of
his first Safe Zone sunset, Michael leaned against the warmth and shape of the thought
that there was, at last, another controller of the world. And in the rocking carriage
of his Hummer seat, he found himself pleasantly dozing. For something warm was spreading
out from his ribs that took him nearly the entire trip back to the Capitol, even with
all its stops to open the barricade gates, to recognize.

Calm.

Ease.

Peace.

The Capitol dome was a twilit beacon upon their return. Far in the congregating dark
came the sounds of moans and the Bellows’ ceaseless march, but they were punctuated
by the frequent
boom
s of detonating land mines.

The captain’s footsteps clocked in the soaring marble halls as he took Michael and
Patrick to their own room: the office of the lieutenant governor, which was gloriously
boring compared to the chaos of the halls. The captain waited a moment in the doorway
before leaving, the hall’s fluorescence silhouetting him: gunslinger, steady, utterly
adult.

Later, tucking Patrick in on his cot, Michael glanced out their window, seeing a different
view than he’d had in the Senate that morning. There wasn’t much moon to see by; the
night was inky, and so the sharp shapes that composed the Charleston skyline were
indistinguishable from the dark hulks of the mountains beyond them. And for one moment,
Michael had an uneasy notion. The West Virginia that he’d traveled through with Patrick
for all those weeks, the West Virginia that was an unmapped nether-zone ruled by insanity
and impossibility, the West Virginia that he’d survived only by his exertion to control
his thoughts and give shape to his days: that West Virginia was consuming the city.

Well . . . I’ll just stay up for a little while,
Michael told himself.
To watch the barriers, just to make sure we’re okay.

But by the time he’d brought a bottled water from the next room for Patrick to take
his Atipax with, Bub was already deep asleep, without pills to help calm him for the
night. And within a minute—for the first time in twenty-four days—Michael was asleep,
without waiting up for the Instructions, too.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The first thing that Michael was aware of, even before he learned that Captain Jopek
was in the room, was that he felt good. He woke up on a cot with sunshine on his chest,
not freezing, not suffering a whacked-in-the-skull headache, and his anxiety didn’t
self-activate.

Still okay,
he thought.
Still alive.

And that relative calm was the only reason he didn’t cry out when he looked over,
expecting Patrick, and instead saw Captain Jopek sitting in the lieutenant governor’s
chair.

“Soldier,” the captain said, “welcome back to the land of the livin’.”

Michael tried to not look weirded out by the fact that, uh, the captain had been watching
him sleep. “Hey, ’morning,” he replied, not wanting to
feel
weirded out, either. But out of habit, Michael’s gaze clicked down to the desktop
the captain sat behind. The body of a huge green-black rifle sat centered among a
spread of metallic parts, apparently in mid-process of being cleaned and reassembled.
Some reflex in Michael tried to judge by the progress of the gun’s assembly how long
the captain had been here. But besides the fact that you hit the
X
button to reload them in first-person shooters, Michael knew
nada
about such heavy-duty weaponry.

“Anybody ever tell you,” the captain said, “you sleep like the dead?”

Michael laughed a little; the captain looked slyly pleased. Michael pushed his blanket
aside and sat up. Then the captain did something amazing: still looking at Michael,
he went back to reassembling the rifle, intricate fingers seeking out parts and
snick
ing them back into their homes.

“Me, I’m not much of a sleeper. Sleep always feels like wasted time,” the captain
said. “How is it that a feller like yourself can get such damn good shut-eye, d’you
think?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, is sleeping so good just the gift of the young? Is it good genes? Just a blessin’
from above?” the captain said musingly. “Or do you think it might be”—
snick-snick
—“that you can sleep”—
snick
—“because you don’t have nothin’ weighin’ on your conscience?”

Springs, taut-coiled, entering gun guts,
snick
; bullets, five small morning flashes of gold, eaten in the clip,
clack-click.

Michael suddenly thought,
He knows I was lying about the soldiers
.

“It could just be that I’m a weakling,” Michael said, trying not to sound nervous.

The captain didn’t laugh at Michael’s self-deprecation. He only stared, his eyes oddly
unreadable, his expression a blank, and Michael was reminded of that unease he’d felt
during his conversation with the captain in the cafeteria, that vague sensation that
the captain was somehow dissecting him.

Finally, Michael said, “That’s awesome,” indicating the captain’s assembling skills.

An enormous grin split the captain’s blank face. “Thanks for noticin’!” He seemed
to consider Michael for a second. His fingers paused.

“So, uh,” Michael said, “is Patrick around?”

“Bobbie’s got him. . . . Can I ask you somethin’, soldier?” the captain said.

“Sure.”

“You ever feel like you were born for some special greatness? Like even if the world
didn’t see it—
wouldn’t
see it—every day of your life, a marvel was coming your way? Like you were something
they could never imagine?”

Michael tried to consider the question honestly. But he was distracted, because he
noticed something strange: the captain’s accent, which had faded in and out yesterday,
wasn’t there at all—hadn’t been, actually, since Michael woke up a minute ago.

At Michael’s hesitation, the captain waved a hand almost angrily, his enthusiasm apparently
dampened. And when he spoke, the accent was back. “You want to know why I’m here,
I guess.” He slapped the clip into the bottom of his now-assembled rifle, stood, and
looped the strap over his shoulder. “Well, I want to tell you a secret. Walk with
me, I never could stand sittin’ still.”

Michael followed him into the marble hallway with its disordered scattered cots and
vandalized governor statues. Still feeling anxious, he allowed the captain to lead
him around the ring of the Capitol’s central rotunda. Above them, the great golden
dome glowed with daylight.

“I tried to get on the horn this mornin’ with the rescue unit again,” the captain
said. “The signal ain’t great. Actually, to tell you the truth, I’d rather yackity-yack
on a tin-can telephone. The mountains’re pretty, but they sure don’t love radio signals.
Wish I knew how to boost the signal, but I’m a good ol’boy, what do I know?”

Michael could hear the voices of the others somewhere. He wished he were with Patrick.

“Did they say how far away they were?” Michael asked.

“Neg. But I’m guessing two days. They were askin’ about how many we got here, and
I told ’em about you and your brother. Since they’re from the Richmond Safe Zone,
I asked ’em about your mother.”

Michael stopped in his tracks, the sun suddenly painfully bright. His heart hammered.

“They couldn’t answer before the signal went out,” the captain went on. “So I did
a little research on my own. I found a list that the government was making before
the Charleston Zone went down last week.”

Captain Jopek reached into his camouflage jacket and pulled out a folded white paper,
columned with names. And written at the top were these words:

CONFIRMED DEAD (FEMALE), WV SAFE ZONE

Michael felt his insides go liquid.
Oh God,
he thought.
No. No, please—

But then, after allowing Michael to gaze at this terrifying header for a full second
or two, the captain chuckled, “Whoops, heh-heh. Other side, soldier.” He flipped it
over, handed Michael the paper.

CONFIRMED CHECK-INS (FEMALE), CHARLESTON SAFE ZONE, 11/1–11/5.

This list was far longer, but Michael spotted the highlighted name immediately.

MOLLY JEAN FARIS. CONFIRMED CHECK-IN: 11/4.

Tears pushed on Michael’s eyes. He didn’t smile: he just felt lightheaded.
Mom made it
, he thought.
God, she really did.

“Thank you,” he breathed.

“Yessir,” Jopek said nonchalantly, and clapped a hand on Michael’s shoulder.

Michael had not actually been thanking Jopek, though: he’d been thanking . . . he
wasn’t quite sure what. “Thank you for showing me this, Captain,” he said.

What about Ron? Is he on a list, too?

But Michael realized . . . he didn’t want to know.

“You’re welcome. I just want you to remember one thing, okay, Michael?”

Suddenly, the enormous hand on Michael’s shoulder squeezed, with enough force to power
over the border from “buddy-buddy” to painful. The captain’s other hand shot up, ripped
the list from Michael’s grasp, left Michael holding just two torn triangles of paper.
“The reason you can sleep?” said Captain Jopek. “It’s me, Michael.

“So next time we go out in the city, you don’t goddamn ever tell me when it’s time
to go home, how ’bout that, shithead?”

And before Michael could respond, the captain stuffed the paper back into his jacket,
and walked away.

Michael felt his cheeks flare and prickle. The captain’s echoing footsteps dwindled
down the hall, but Michael stood still, feeling dazed . . . and oddly ashamed.

Why the hell did the captain have to do that?
he thought, anxiety creeping up his throat.

He stared at the jagged paper in his hands.
Maybe he was right, though
, Michael tried to tell himself.
I mean, maybe I shouldn’t have said we should go home. He’s the soldier; he knows
what he’s doing.

But Michael still felt hot-faced, and a little angry.

He began to follow the dim sounds of voices through the halls. He was almost to the
Governor’s Dining Room (aka a random cafeteria) when Patrick came out of a bathroom
and waved.

“Michael, hey! Don’t go in there, it stinks now. Hi!”

Michael grinned as Bub approached, comforted by Patrick’s excitement to see him. He
slipped the torn paper into his pants pocket—and despite his happiness, he felt a
sudden gloomy pang in his chest. He’d never been more aware of the gulf that lay between
himself and Bub. Michael had just received news that 100 percent validated The Game,
that justified all the danger he’d guided them through since Halloween. But Bub was
still unaware of the tightrope that they’d run together. And until he had solid earth
under his feet in the Actually Safe Zone in Richmond—until they reunited with Mom,
and began to remake their lives—Michael couldn’t tell him,
Bub, I was scared Mom didn’t make it to the Safe Zone
.
I was scared that running away didn’t actually save
anything
, ’cause nothing worked out in the end
.
The “
yes-yes
” and “the Game Master”? I was pretty much terrified that they were full of shit
.

Michael settled for saying, “Awesome shirt, duder.”

Patrick wore a new hoodie: blue and gold, with a deer silhouetted by a sunrise. The
shirt was a little long, but otherwise a good fit. “Bobbie gave it! It’s soft. I drawed
this for you.” He handed Michael a piece of paper covered with red and silver scribbles.
“It’s Ultraman.”

Michael replied, “Obviously.” As they headed toward the dining room, he could smell
something sweet and buttery. Sweet baby Jeezus,
cinnamon rolls
.

And he’d begun pushing open the cafeteria door when he heard the sound inside—a sound
so familiar and so foreign, and it stopped him.
Is someone crying?
Michael thought.

He cracked the door, peeking through. Hank and Bobbie sat alone at a red cafeteria
table; the cafeteria was only half lit, the sections beyond them dark, but there was
light enough to see by. Hank leaned forward with his elbows on the table, one hand
in his hair, his other holding Bobbie’s hand. And standing at the door, secretly looking
in, Michael realized something that left him a little awed: