The End Games (29 page)

At Michael’s mocking, Jopek’s eyes went wide. He stopped a few feet ahead of Michael.
“Mike. Mike. Oh, Mike.” His voice quavered with controlled fury. “I shoulda thrown
your ass over the cliff.”

“Hey . . .” It was a weak protest. But it came from
Hank
.

“Hank, why don’t you shut your mouth up, candy-pants?” Jopek said.

“Don’t be a bunghole,” sniffed Patrick, and pulled his hood over his head and shrank
it shut with the strings, cupping his hands over his ears to hide the sounds.

Michael braced himself, feeling the pebbled grip of the gun in his pocket.

“Is Michael
wrong
, though?” Holly asked.

Jopek’s nostrils flared. “You know, I’m
damn sure
I don’t like that tone, girl.”

“Well, Captain, I don’t like that you drove me to a bunch of people who want to shoot
me,” Michael said. Jopek tried to protest, but Michael almost-shouted over him: “Is
it just me, or does that break one of a platoon’s basic
rules
?” He emphasized the last word for Patrick.

The words rang.

Jopek stood in the center of them now—the center of his platoon—and in the burning
silence he sensed what was occurring: the image these people held of him, which always
stood on solid ground, was teetering at a cliff’s edge. Captain Jopek circled on his
boot heels, scanning their faces, finding a dangerous uncertainty that he could never
have predicted.

And Jopek smiled. He seemed true, in the same way that he had seemed true as he fought
the Rapture. More than ever before, Michael understood that, like himself, Jopek was
most awake when in danger. Jopek was coming alive now, and he was about to do something
to take control of the night.

So am I,
Michael thought.

Guys,
he imagined himself saying, as he had on the car ride to the Capitol, as he had every
night Before when things were bad and Mom pretended they weren’t, when home was pain
but freedom and life were just one opened door away.
Guys, I think we need to leave now
.

But Holly took the play out of his hands.

“Captain, Michael wants to go.”

What are you doing?
Michael screamed silently.

“And sir,” Holly said, “I think that it’s absolutely understandable that he feels
that way. He’s had a terrible day, we all have, and I think it’s possible, sir, that
you did put us in danger needlessly. With things getting worse with the Rapture and
the Bellows, doesn’t it make sense for us to leave—all of us?” Her jaw was strongly
set; she was trying to appear calm and reasonable. But there was something desperate
in her voice, as if this moment was her final chance to salvage the hope she had placed
in the captain.

“We,” said Jopek, “are goin’ nowhere. And you-all know
that
is rule one. Rule one.”

A hundred feet tall, all muscle—that’s how Jopek seemed as he slung his machine rifle
over his shoulder and turned. He marched away, and each of the steps sounded like
doors slamming and sealing.

“Why the hell not, Jopek?”

Hank’s voice was soft, so soft. For this a-hole Cool Kid, Michael suddenly felt something
like love.

Jopek stopped, but didn’t turn.

“Why not?” Hank repeated, louder. “Why can’t we leave?”

Thumpuh
: Michael’s heart, a fist in his throat. Jopek looked at Hank, his face incredulous
and hateful, like a jack-o’-lantern with a butane torch inside.

“We’re doin’ what I say, and I say—”

“I—I think you’re wrong on this, Captain,” Hank said.

Jopek asked, “You think I’m wrong?” He sounded politely interested.

“Yes, I—”

But somehow Jopek had cleared the distance between him and Hank before any of them
realized he was moving and his fist pistoned out and he slugged Hank, cracking across
his jaw. Holly gasped. Patrick’s blind-hooded head looked up, momentarily startled,
then hummed and looked back down.

Hank managed to catch himself before his face struck the marble, but it was close.

“You wanna compare guns, Hank?” asked Jopek softly, leaning over him. “Boy, you ungrateful
shit. Who’s been savin’ you this whole time?”

“
Michael
saved us in the Magic Lantern,” spat Holly miserably.

“Little girl, don’t be smart.”

“Somebody has to.”

“You’ll want to watch that mouth.”

Can a whole body quake with a heartbeat?

After a moment, Holly replied, “No, Captain.”

Hank touched his blood, looked at the captain, sneered.

What happened next was as palpable as a burst of electricity traveling across the
rotunda:
the final control in this room shifted to Michael
. They looked to him for his response. In that dizzying moment, he knew what it must
be like to be Jopek: the trust . . . and the power.

“Screw y’all, somebody’s gotta patrol,” said Jopek, and this time his departing steps
were loud and angrily undisciplined, but even with that noise and even with the moans
of the Bellows, Jopek stopped at the unmistakable sound: the click of a revolver,
being cocked. . . .

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jopek turned, and blinked, “Lower that, little fella.”

“I don’t feel like it,” Michael replied calmly.

Jopek’s gaze dissected him. “Where you get that?”

“We’re leaving,” Michael said.

Outside the door at Michael’s back, the throat of the storm roared snow and fury.

“You’re playin a losin’ hand here, mister. Oh yes, you are.”

“Slide your rifle to me,” Michael said. “Unstrap it from your shoulder
slow
. If I think you’re going to try anything, I’ll shoot first.” Jopek searched his face.
“Stop it, you know I’m telling the truth—”

Suddenly, Jopek’s gaze darted above Michael’s shoulder.
“YEAH, THAT’S IT, YOU GOT HIM, HANK, TAKE HIM OUT!”
he roared.

Michael flinched, braving for the impact.

But when he checked out of the corner of his eye, the only part of Hank that was moving
was his head, nodding:
keep going, Michael.

“Rifle,” Michael said. “And the pistol on your ankle.”

“Well, goddamn you,” Jopek said casually, unstrapped the weapons from his shoulder
and ankle, and placed them on the floor. He kicked both, rattling, toward Michael.

Everything inside Michael’s chest seemed to fill with light and wind.

Holly’s gaze met his and locked:
I am freaking scared
.
Okay? I’m going along but I am goddamn petrified.

Michael felt a dull ache of longing to let her know she was safe.
This is the real me, Holly: the real me is the one who can save you. I swear.

“It’s okay,” Michael told her.

“Naw it ain’t, though,” Jopek said.

Michael looked at Hank—whose jaw was already beginning to swell—and asked him, “We
good to go?”

Hank nodded.

Michael sensed Jopek step closer; without looking, as smoothly as if he were lighting
a Bic, Michael’s thumb double-cocked the hammer.

Hank and Holly moved toward Michael and Patrick, in front of the doorway.

I am safe,
he felt.
Little brother and me, safe.

Control
.

Joy.

Victory.

Promise.

The keys.

Holding the pistol steady, Michael fished the keys from his pocket and tossed them
to Hank. He handed both the ankle pistol and the cop’s pistol to Hank as well, switching
Jopek’s assault rifle to his right hand, keeping a bead on Jopek.

“Get the Hummer,” Michael said. “Gas it up with the tanker out there and then pull
the Hummer up.”

“To where?” Hank said.

“Honest Abe,” Michael replied, then nodded toward the door to direct Holly to go with
Hank.

Jopek watched, and the reality slowly settled on his face:
This is actually happening. A seventeen-year-old is actually beating me
. For only the second time, Michael thought he understood Jopek. He looked
emotionally destroyed
. It was the face of a man who is watching his worst enemy sail away on a rescue boat
from the island without him.

“Faris?” Hank called from the door. “Aren’t you coming?”

“One sec.”

Michael nudged Patrick with his knee. Patrick grunted, but he took his hands from
his ears and pushed the hood back from his face. His hair was wild.

He looked up at Michael, expectant.

This is it, Patrick
.
This is finally it.

“Captain, we’re going to go out to the Hummer now,” Michael said. “We’re going to
leave. We’re going to look for the soldiers, and we’re going to Richmond. We’ll have
the machine gun up top. We’ll have food. And you can’t come.”

“You’ll die, my friend,” Jopek said. “That’s a guarantee.”

“Want to know how I know you’re wrong?” Michael smiled. And he said the last line
of his speech, the final piece of the puzzle that would make the world understandable
for Patrick, that would reassemble and fortify The Game for him, all the way to the
Richmond Safe Zone:

“
Because you’re the Betrayer, Jopek
.”

Except, he didn’t. He’d gotten to
you’re
when he had to stop, because something terrible and impossible had occurred. Jopek’s
moonlit face went dark: a shadow fell across it, a shadow that blocked the moonlight
through the Capitol hall’s high windows. And it was at that moment that Michael heard
the shriek from high above him, from the sky, like a keening lunatic commandment from
some deranged god.

Suddenly the windows behind Jopek’s head cracked.

Run,
Michael thought.
Just run now
. He went for Patrick, picking him up.

Above, one of the hall’s chandeliers was pitching, glittering wildly, the glass eerie
music, clawing drags of light on the walls. There was something on the chandelier.
Something like a clot of blackness, a moving thing, and hanging upside down.

There was a dead boy above them.

A dead boy, that was all. A living corpse. Something he had seen a thousand times.
But Michael’s fingertips suddenly went numb with terror. His stomach flooded with
ice. The
yes-yes
shattered in a single, flying instant.

The boy hung above them, knees hooked on the chandelier, like a kid on playground
monkey bars.

No. That’s not real,
Michael thought.
No, no, no, my God that
can’t
be real!

Because he recognized, with one glance, the boy’s crooked, poor-kid haircut.

Cady Gibson, one month dead, still in his funeral suit, peered down at them, teeth
peeled back into a smile like an arc of fiery bone.

Can’t be right. Doesn’t work like that. He just died in a coal-mine accident! How
did he come back? HOW DID HE COME—

“Is that the Betrayer?”
Patrick whispered.

The boy, inverted, swung from the light, spearing through the dark. He struck the
wall with four quick limbs . . . and he did not fall. He clung to the wall; perched,
the all-dark lamps of his eyes on them.

Doesn’t work like that!

Sections of his blond scalp hung loose in flaps. His brow was thin enough to see the
skull. In his left temple was a ragged hole, perhaps the head wound that had taken
his life when he fell in the mine. And the reason that he seemed to smile was because
his lips had rotted off.
Hi! Wanna play? I’m new here!

KILL IT!
Michael thought. His gun was rising, rising.
You have to kill it NOW!

Cady opened his mouth and out exploded Hell.

Two summers ago, Ron had lit a bottle rocket in an empty beer bottle that tipped over,
and the firecracker screamed a hot bright slash past Michael’s head, close enough
to scar his ear. That scorching cry was the only thing Michael could compare to what
now came from this kid’s gray, quaking jaws.

The lenses of his machine-rifle scope shattered from the shriek. Michael recoiled,
and at the same instant, involuntarily yanked the trigger: fire burst from the end
of the barrel.

The creature dodged on the wall, flitting gravity-less from bullets like a snake inside
a nightmare. His shrieking was a trapped siren.

The creature leapt over Michael, and landed on someone two times his own size.
“Off!”
Hank screamed in a hysterical mixture of revulsion and horror.
“Off Jesus get off shit shit get it off get it off!”
He spun wildly and jerked in a dance of terror.

The creature twisted upon him like flame.

Patrick grabbed Michael’s waist.
“What the?!”

Holly cried out, lunged to help: stopped, then screamed her brother’s name as if her
heart might break.

The creature’s jaws snapped. Hank began to weep.

Michael placed his finger on his trigger again, knowing it was too late, knowing that
Hank was bitten, that Ron and Jopek had been right about him: he
was
too weak. But then a miracle happened.

As Cady arched his jaws for the bite, Hank, spinning, spinning, snarled Cady’s legs.

He hurled Cady at the wall. The creature flew, flailing like a beast kicked off a
cliff.

Hank crowed, apparently as much in surprise as in triumph, and upon his face there
was a savage joy.

Cady met the wall, but instead of the impact shattering him, he bent his legs to catch
the momentum. Elegant. Cady launched back like a swimmer making a turn at the end
of a pool: he launched back at Hank, jaws first.

Insanely, in that same moment, Jopek was running at Michael like a fullback, head
down.

“Hey-back-get-back!” Michael shouted and raised the rifle and Jopek kept coming anyway,
and Michael fired over his head. And Jopek stopped.

“Michael, shoot it!” Holly screamed. “
Shoot it, MICHAEL, PLEASE SHOOT—”