The End Games (18 page)

So after a tuna-fish-sandwich, sugar-free lunch—after an unsuccessful attempt to get
Bub to take a nap—Michael suggested they play a game of
Sorry!
in the Governor’s Dining Room. Bobbie, who had found the board game, played as well.
Even though it was one of his favorites, though, Patrick was uneasy, fidgeting and
saying, midway through, “Can’t we do somethin’
else
? Michael, can’t we?”

And Michael began to realize what was the matter with Patrick today.

That realization made Michael’s stomach drop a little, for it implied a dimension
to Patrick’s anxiety he’d not previously considered. Michael always knew, of course,
that Bub needed to
understand
the world around him in order to feel safe.

Now, though, the world around Patrick finally
was
safe . . . but because hanging out aimlessly at the Capitol wasn’t what The Game
said they should do,
Bub could not understand that he did not have to feel his horrible anxiety anymore
. It struck Michael that the respites Patrick had received from that anxiety—the way
he’d been so happy around Bobbie, for example—were only temporary.
Patrick can’t really get better, can’t really feel comfortable—can’t really
change—
until I get him to the real Safe Zone.

Michael’s watch read 2:30 and the sun outside the windows of the Governor’s Dining
Room had begun its sure descent toward the skyline.
Okay,
he thought.
So, just give Bub a “Game task” to do.

And so, at the tail end of that afternoon, just as Patrick was putting away the board
game pieces and Michael was still trying to come up with a new task, Captain Jopek
elbowed open the door to the cafeteria and announced: “Headin’ downtown for a quick
trip, troops. Load up at the Hummer in three minutes.” The captain saw Michael check
his watch, said:

“Got a problem with that idea, Faris?”

Michael shook his head, both because he felt that unaccountable Jopek-seems-strange
shame and also because, for the first time that afternoon, Patrick seemed excited.

So Michael dressed his brother in his coat and wool hat and mittens. He loaded Bub
into a rear-compartment harness in the Hummer, Hank and Holly and Bobbie following
him. He comforted himself with the knowledge that it was 2:47; sunset was almost an
hour away. He caught Holly’s eye, nodded, both nervous and happy when she took the
harness right across from him, with only the white emergency gurney to separate them.

The captain revved the engine, beginning their “mission.”

And very soon after that, everything began to go wrong.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Aren’t there, like, land mines here?

Michael shifted in the harness, looking uneasily out the Hummer’s rear portal window.
The captain had taken them across the Capitol bridge, into the downtown grid, but
instead of simply continuing yesterday’s systematic search of the main, mine-less
streets, Jopek had unlocked several thick layers of fencing, and taken them into an
alley so narrow that the sides of the Hummer nearly scraped.

Michael looked to Holly, wanting to know what she thought of this, but the captain
had opened the sliding plate between the front and rear Hummer compartments: the unfiltered
sound of the engine was so loud that nobody in the back could hold a conversation.

Calm down, man,
Michael thought, feeling a little panicky.
The captain knows what he’s doing.

They got to their destination safely. The side streets didn’t contain as many mines
as Michael had thought, perhaps because the recent influx of Bellows into the city
had detonated them already.

But still.

The Hummer stopped. Captain Jopek hurled open the rear double doors.

The pale fire of late afternoon burned on the captain’s grinning, eager face. “’Mon
out,” he said, strapping on his Kevlar vest, his wrist knives, ankle pistol. “This
little mission shouldn’t take too long.”

They’d parked next to an enormous fake-corn maze, set up in a shopping square across
from an old movie theater as a Halloween decoration, Michael supposed. Scarecrows
hung inside the maze, ragged and off-kilter on crosses; jack-o’-lanterns rested on
bales of hay, their puckered mouths stuffed with snow. Much of the corn was flattened;
all of it was browned. Michael felt, again, that sense of vague depression: seeing
the maze was like walking past a water park closed for winter.

“Rock ’n’ roll,” Hank said as he disembarked.
Observe the badass
is what it sounded like.

Michael helped Bobbie out of her harness, then waited with Patrick as she and everyone
else piled out of the Hummer.

“What’re we gonna
do
?” Patrick whispered as Michael set him down on the street, heading toward the maze
behind the rest of the group.

“Just wait while the captain looks for people,” Michael replied.
I guess.
“Hundred points for each one.”

“Points for people?” Patrick said, and stopped walking. “There’s
never
people in buildings, though.”

And just like that, the momentary relief that Bub had gotten from Jopek’s “mission”
announcement was gone: his small face crinkled down with disappointment and frustration;
his mittened hands clenched and unclenched. Michael could feel, like something electrical,
the tingling signals of Patrick’s anxiety through the air between them.

Michael’s heart hurt a little. He saw the scene around them through Bub’s eyes.

The snow, all slushy and gray.

No gentle hills to sled.

No Lightball-able places to explore.

And most of all: no real reason to believe that The End was one step closer than it
had been before.

Michael remembered the other night, in Coalmount, when he and Patrick had been taken
aback by the brilliant starpointed sky, how it had seemed that they almost owned the
world. Now the captain was standing beside this dreary abandoned maze, talking to
“his troops,” undoubtedly telling them to wait outside “while yer captain does a little
explorin’.”

Uh, Michael
,
are you
seriously
feeling nostalgic for the good old days when you and your brother were trying not
to get eaten
?

Well. Actually: yeah.

“Maybe can we look for more pieces for my weapon tomorrow?” Patrick murmured, almost
to himself, walking toward the maze, his shoulders slouched. He pulled his tiny orange
toy gun from his coat pocket, then put it away again forlornly. “I can’t even make
it shoot, the trigger’s too hard to pull.”

“Bub, hold up.” Patrick looked back. “Why don’t we go look for the pieces
now
? Secret style.”

’Cause who’s it gonna hurt, if I do what I want for a couple minutes?

“Nuh-
uh
, really?” Patrick replied, his face coming alive. Michael nodded, and Patrick offered
him a double fist-bump. And it was as Michael led back around the opposite side of
the Hummer, going away from the captain and the maze and everyone else, heading toward
an Ace Hardware storefront, that in the back of his mind he realized something was
off.

Footsteps, coming toward him, fast across spattering snow.

Michael turned.

And when he looked, the captain’s face was there, filling his vision.

“
Hi! What’cha doin?
” Captain Jopek said.

Michael startled, trying to search the captain’s eyes, finding instead only that perpetual
blankness. But he told himself:
I’m just taking my brother for a walk, captain, and I’m allowed to do that.

The captain’s checking to make sure you’re safe, that’s all.

“Taking Patrick for a quick walk,” Michael replied, trying to sound confident.

The captain’s brow darkened. He nodded, like a man in contemplation.

“Taking Patrick for a walk,” Jopek repeated. “Takin’ P,” he said, grinned blazingly,
“for a . . .”

The captain paused.

And growled:

“
WAAALK
?!”

The sound rumbled and cracked the winter air between them. In that moment, the captain
exploded toward Michael, stopping inches short of Michael’s nose.

“What the,” Patrick breathed.

Michael opened his mouth to say something, but the captain shook his head with such
authority that he silenced himself. Michael became aware of Hank smirking in the background,
though Bobbie and Holly were nowhere in sight. Michael suddenly felt like a kid who
had struck out at Little League tryouts.

“Maybe you’re too dumbass to recollect this, but I told you to start listenin’ to
my orders, Mikey,” the captain whispered, close, so close, his hot breath like a small
invasion.

Jopek’s just trying to . . . to . . .
 He hoped the sentence would finish itself. But, no.

Jopek put his right hand, shaped like a pistol, to Michael’s temple. The crescent
of his nail pressed inward. Before Michael knew what was happening, tears pushed on
his eyes. He took an awkward step backward, but his butt struck the wheel bay of the
Hummer.

“I—I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

The captain smiled ugly humor. “Aw, I think you
proved
you didn’t think.”

Hank guffawed. Michael did not understand the malice: He’d thought he and Hank had
formed some degree of rapport yesterday.

The captain cocked his thumb back, like the hammer of a gun . . . and, finally, with
a light push, drew it away from Michael’s skull.

“You just gotta be careful, boyo,” he whispered, and clapped Michael happily on the
shoulder, without at all changing those dark eyes. “You just want to make sure you
follow my rules.”

Hank chuckled. The keys on the captain’s hip sang like a ring of knives as he left.

The captain is like Ron, Michael.

Jopek is just like Ron.

Welcome home.

Patrick’s expression was an honest blank, as if someone had taken an enormous pink
eraser and wiped away everything that made sense to him. “Michael?” he said uncertainly,
and reached out to take his hand.

“Bub,”
Michael hissed, snapping his hand away. “Not now.”

What the hell is the matter with you?
he thought.
What is
wrong
with you
? Why, when he’d looked down the barrel of Rulon’s rifle, should Captain Jopek’s gun
hand seem so horrible?

“’Kay but, why you fighting with—”

“I said not
now
. What part of that is confusing?”

Patrick’s face crumpled. The expression should have broken Michael’s heart. And he
realized, resentfully, that Patrick seemed to think it should, too.

Michael did what he knew would hurt most: He rolled his eyes and shook his head, like
he was trying to hide annoyance at a little kid who wants to play but is too small
to do it right.

Patrick made a face of raw pain and walked away, around the Hummer, toward the maze.

Okay, so the captain’s being an asshole
, Michael told himself.
So what? So freaking what?

By the corn, everyone else stood in a circle that looked sealed to him.

“Just had to fetch Mikey, is all,” the captain was saying lightly to Holly and Bobbie.
“And I tell you what: y’all come in with me this time.” He looked at Michael; a subtle
sneer. “Yeah, I think the man in charge is gonna keep a real close eye on you from
now on.”

“Captain? Pardon me, Captain?”

“Bobbie.”

“Since it’s still daylight, I’d like to do the lookin’ out,” Bobbie said. “If Henry
doesn’t mind letting me use his gun, of course.” She elbowed Hank’s arm, looking nervous
but also a little giddy. Like there was nothing wrong in all the world.

The captain tipped his helmet to her. “Bobbie Lou, I think you just got Henry’s job.”

Hank didn’t look super pleased.

Bobbie looked at Michael, offering him her smile: that bright revelation of wrinkles
and white teeth and eyes. She winked, and silently mouthed, “Maybe they’ll recruit
me”—but Michael still felt so sick with shame that he looked away.

He followed everyone else around the maze. Holly kept trying to catch his eye, asking
with her expression:
you okay?
Michael felt a swell of embarrassment, again cast his gaze elsewhere, saw Bobbie
on the Hummer out of the corner of his eye.

Hay tugged and danced across the ground between them. Bobbie’s silhouette stood crisp
against the orange sky. She lay a hand on the roof-mounted machine gun, as if it were
a possibly warm stovetop. Her small shape looked so fragile, as if a wind could lift
her into the sky, and for no reason Michael could name, that idea made a moment of
fear chill his chest. He had a frighteningly childlike urge to call out to her. Then
she was raising her hand to her forehead, saluting them, pretending to be a soldier.

Michael turned without a salute back.

The captain led them into the shadow of the movie theater’s marquee:
MAGIC LANTERN THEATER—HORROR-A-THON—GET UR TIX EARLY—SHOWS SELL OUT.
As he kicked in the door, the smell of stale popcorn rippled out. Hank screamed when
a body pitched out of the shadows, but it was just a cutout of Vin Diesel.

Michael looked into the dark.
No, I am
not
that old “Michael” anymore
.
I explored places, just like we’re doing now, for twenty-three fugging days, before
I met Jopek
, Michael tried to reassure himself as he stepped into the theater.

An old movie theater lobby: dips of velvet rope, moldy pretzels and lumpy nacho sauce,
fake coffins propped against the walls.

Captain Jopek’s face, floating in the dark, turned toward them.

“Stay sharp, ladies.” His breath was a ghost.

“This is Captain Horace Jopek of the United States Army! I am here on a search-and-rescue!
If you’re alive, call out the first three letters of the alphabet!”