The End Games (30 page)

The creature landed on Hank and roiled and hissed on him like spilled acid.
“NAAAAAAA
—
”
Hank screamed. He stumbled backward at the creature’s impact, and his head struck
the wall with a
crack!
loud enough to make Michael feel sympathetic pain.

The monster went blurry with speed and it was hard to tell where Hank ended and where
the monster began—

—feel your
blood—

—and a thousand movie scenes of hostage standoffs flashed in Michael’s brain—

—feel it—

—each of them ending with the cop reluctantly lowering his gun.

Oh eff that,
thought Michael.

The rifle slammed into Michael’s shoulder like a rapid fist.

His firepower was enormous, his aim flawless. Ropey blackness slung out of Cady as
the bullets shredded his little-boy’s suit. The fusillade threw Cady off of Hank,
and for one incredible instant, the boy-monster corkscrewed in the air. Cady struck
the wall, and with a shriek—like a steel rod being fed through a buzz saw—he threw
back his head, impossibly far. Unlike any other Bellow, Cady seemed to be experiencing
pain
, and there was nearly human shock and rage in his voice, as if he was furious that
his plan had been interrupted.

I guess that makes us even, you asshole!

Michael kept firing, torturing the monster-boy.

Hank had kept his head together just amazingly well: he’d ducked down to the ground
to avoid the bullets the moment Cady was off of him, hadn’t even flinched when some
of Cady’s viscera splashed on him. “Hank! C’mon!” Michael shouted behind the rifle.

Hank stayed perfectly still.

“Hank, over here,
now
!” Holly cried, moving toward Michael and Patrick. Michael had the monster seized
in the bullets now, but what about when the clip ran dry? And Jopek was only maybe
ten feet from Michael, and maybe he’d attack, too, and—

— and Hank didn’t move.

Blood trickled from the back of his skull and spread into the lanes between the marble
tiles.

“No. Oh, Christ, no,” Holly breathed.

The gun stopped quiet in Michael’s hands.

Hank had been dead since his head had struck the wall.

Cady Gibson stared, smiled, smiled, and he looked like a boy who had wandered across
an executioners’ firing line and thought it sort of tickled. Michael’s eyes locked
with his—
its
—dark sockets, and chills flew through him like black wings. Because, beyond the nine-year-old
eyes, he saw some poisonous truth flash:

This Thing was newborn . . . and it was very, very old.

Cady Gibson shrieked one final blast, and this time the windows blew out, like glass
curtains. The monster leapt out the window and vanished into the white void of the
storm. And as the boy’s shrieking faded off across the night that had promised Michael
freedom and future, Michael could not help but think that the sound seemed to become
laughter—yes, laughter, at him. . . .

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Patrick,
Michael thought.
You have to tell Patrick it’s okay. That you’re not scared of what just happened.
You . . . you have to breathe, Michael. Breathe. Rule one, breathe.

Now, look down, champ. Look down, and see Patrick disappear into himself. Look down,
and see your brother Freaking. Because you were too late. Because you forgot the Atipax.
Because Game freaking OVER—

Michael looked down.

His brother was watching him. But Patrick was not terrified. The cry of the impossible
monster still rang, but Patrick was not the panting and quivering kid he had been
in the pharmacy. Bub was, sort of, smiling. As if he was just slightly bewildered
that a boy had somehow clung to the wall and gotten one of the Gamers.

How the hell is Patrick okay?
Michael wondered distantly.

Patrick said, “You just shot the Betrayer, right?” And that was the moment Michael
saw the numbed desperation in Patrick’s strange expression. “Hank got hurt but we’re
okay because
we
play right, right?”

He knows that Hank got hurt
.
Maybe even dead—if Bub even totally understands what that means. But The Game still
makes sense to him. For now, it still does, because he thinks Hank just didn’t follow
the Instructions.
Even with Patrick’s limited understanding of the world and his need to believe in
The Game, Michael didn’t think that this deception would last long. And even though
Michael knew that he’d
had
to build The Game’s illusions for Patrick’s safety, he still suddenly felt the dreadful
power of his own deception.
He feels better when someone is “logically” dead than when someone is just “cheating.”

Oh God, Patrick, what the hell kind of world have I made for you?

Patrick repeated, this time a little shriller with need:
“You got the Betrayer, right
?”

Which was when Michael remembered that Jopek was still nearby. He whirled toward Jopek,
raising the rifle to his shoulder. The world puckered at the edges of his vision;
a bitter yellow heat spiked up his throat.
Oh, I think I’m in shock,
he realized with dim interest.
I think I’m going to puke.

Somewhere behind him, Holly sucked a gasp, like she’d forgotten to breathe, too.

Jopek wasn’t running at him like he had feared. He was kneeling at Hank’s body—
Hank’s corpse,
whispered Michael’s mind, and his stomach rolled. Jopek’s expression was a battle
surgeon’s look, a face of compartmentalized concern that was, somehow, everything
in the world grown-up and strong. It said,
Trust me
; you said,
Always.

With his face angled toward the fallen Hank, Jopek raised his blistering eyes.
Shoulda listened, Mikey
, they said, hideously triumphant
. Oh yes, you shoulda let ol’ Jopek stay in charge.

Not
going to puke!
thought Michael fiercely. Not
in front of you.

“No-no-no-no-no,”
Holly whispered. She stood alone before the open threshold of the snowing night.
He pictured two pixelated characters, Holly and Hank, walking toward the bright block
letters that read
THE END
. They had made it this far together by virtue of their grudging love. But as they
make their ending move, there comes the shriek of an invisible ax to tear one of them
away.

Holly shook her head: slowly at first, then speeding. Her dark hair swam and slapped
across her face.
No, no,
the motion seemed to say.
Doesn’t work this way
.

“Hey-it’s-okay!” called Patrick brightly, his crescendoing distress causing uncharacteristic
emotional tone-deafness. “Hank just played wrong, pff. We played right, huh! Michael
said there was gonna be a Betray—”

“Holly, I am so sorry,” Michael interrupted. He moved slowly toward her, gun still
raised. He wanted to touch her, to hold her; most of all, he wanted to shield her
eyes from the sight of her brother, the blood pooling under her brother’s head and
mixing with the black Cady-core that had splattered on and around him. But he had
to keep the bead on Jopek. “I am so sorry that Hank . . . that he—”

Holly sucked her lips into her mouth.
She’s going to freak,
Michael saw.
And maybe she’ll be too upset to leave
. He felt a flash of guilt for analyzing her grief.

Holly asked as if to herself, “Is he
gone
?”

“Yeah—God, I’m sorry.”

“Got shot, that’s my thinkin’,” muttered Jopek. He stood from the body, brushing his
hands, shaking his head as if in mourning.

“I thought maybe he was going to get bit, but . . . I didn’t think he hit his head
that hard. . . I—I didn’t think he—”

Patrick tugged Michael’s waist.
“We
always
play right, huh?”
he whispered, with a building urgency, his voice beginning to quiver. “That’s why
we’re awesome, huh? Low-five, huh?”

“Is he going to come back?” Holly said to herself.

Michael didn’t think so—Hank had died only of his head wound—but he still pictured
himself having to shoot Hank in the head in front of Holly to keep Hank from possibly
rising again. His throat clenched sickeningly and he had to fight back a moan of dread
and despair. That was too much. He looked at Jopek and silently told him,
You killed him.
You
. We should have been gone.

Then he said, “Holly, we’ve got to go.” Holly looked past him, far-eyed. “Patrick?
Okay?” Nothing from either of them, and Michael thought:
I’m going to have to touch Hank. I’m going to have to go through his pockets for the
keys.
“You guys go outside, I’ll be there, we have to go before that Bellow”—he stopped;
calling it a Bellow somehow didn’t feel right—“before that . . . kid comes back.”

“How
did
that kid come back?” Holly asked suddenly, watching Hank. Tears spilled from her
eyes, unblinked.

“The ceiling?” offered Patrick.

“How did it come back?” Holly repeated to herself. “He wasn’t bit. When things were
getting bad, the CDC checked every goddamn coroner’s report, my dad was helping, and
they dug up
any
body that had been bitten. I remember my dad told me the CDC checked Cady’s body
too, to make sure his head wound wasn’t a bite from a Zed.
I’m saying Cady wasn’t bit
,
this isn’t possible, this can’t be real!
”

She jammed a shaky hand through her hair. “Changing,” she said. “The virus is changing.”
She sucked a single sob, a low, humorless laugh sliding from her.

Michael didn’t like the off-kilter edge her voice had. “Well, that just means even
more that we should go, right?” he said quickly, double-checking Jopek as he did.
“Since it’s changing?”

Holly nodded fervently. For one single second, she looked like a girl who has not
been sledgehammered across the mouth with grief. “I guess I’m just kinda like, ‘how?’”
she said, her voice cracking. “You know? How did it happen? I guess . . . it’s just . . . I
just . . . 
how goddamn it did it
happen!” she cried. “HOW DID MY BROTHER DIE, HOW DID THIS
HAPPEN
, THAT KID NEVER GOT BIT! THEY CHECKED CADY AND THERE WEREN’T ANY BITES, THEY CHECKED
AND ALL THAT KID HAD ON HIM WERE A COUPLE GODDAMN
SCRATCHES
!”

And, as if by command, Holly’s voice cut quiet.

And Michael did not understand why.

He did not understand why Holly’s hands plummeted. He did not understand why her eyes
flicked to Patrick with sudden and heartbreaking pity. He didn’t understand why Jopek’s
lips twitched, as if to contain a smile.

And then—

—my neck scratch—

—Michael
did
understand.

“Oh my garsh, what a shame,” Jopek said softly.

“Stay,”
said Michael. The gun slipped in Michael’s grip. His fingers were suddenly jellied
with sweat.

“Naw, I ain’t your puppy dog.” Jopek grinned. “Not no more.” And took a stride closer.

“Stop,”
Michael said, finding the trigger.

Patrick slid closer, asking, “What’s a-matter?”

“Holly—Holly, tell Jopek.”

“What?” she replied. Her voice was soft and quivering.

“Tell him, tell him the truth, tell him my scratch looked
fine
.” But his stomach iced. “
A little inflamed,”
he remembered her saying.

Jopek took another stride closer. Michael double-checked the safety.

“Captain, wait,” Holly said, obviously torn. “He’s—he’s probably fine. . . .”

“Probably?”
Michael sputtered. “Scratches can’t do anything to people!”

Michael was very very very aware of his pulse beating in his neck.

“But like the lady said, Mikey: the virus is changin’.”

“B-bull! If anything was going to happen to me, it already would have.”

“Took Cady a month to come back,” Jopek said. “It could be the same for you. ’Course,
with the virus changin’ it could happen right now, couldn’t it, Holly? Yes indeedy.”

“What could happen right now?” said Patrick, confused.

“Holly,” Michael said.

But there was silence, except for Jopek’s clocking, snake-patient approach.

Jopek saw the weakness on his face, and lunged. Michael made his own move without
thought: he aimed the gun above Jopek’s head, a warning shot. He pulled on the trigger.

Holly screamed. Jopek’s eyes widened and he tensed to flee.

Click,
the gun went.

Michael, dreamlike, blinked at his weapon. His hand floated out to the gun’s slide.
He pulled on the slide to feed new bullets from the magazine. And fired again.

Click. Empty.

Patrick realized something was wrong, and shouted, surprised, “OOOOOHHH!”

Michael said, “Please don’t—”

But Jopek lunged again, saying absurdly, “Ha!” and Michael hurled the empty weapon
at him and was down the hall, was racing down the marble stairs that circled the rotunda,
when the captain grabbed a pistol from Hank’s corpse.

“NO!”
Michael heard Holly cry out.
“HE’S NOT CHANGING, CAPTAIN, DON’T SHOOT H—”

Marble chips exploded to Michael’s right as he reached the bottom stair.

He flinched, screamed, and in between the first shot and the second he had time to
pivot toward a tour information booth, had time to think,
Where am I?
The second shot rang, and something like a high-speed needle tugged the shoulder
of his coat and he shouted again and spun reflexively.
Don’t lose control of yourself, don’t, don’t!
He saw a pair of shadowed governor statues ahead and ran toward them. He had smiled
at them two days ago and thought this zone was the safe End; now Michael thought,
Where the hell am I going to?!
just as a third bullet hit a mark not two inches wide of his ankle.
TURRRRN!
his mind screamed,
TURRRN!,
and his whole skull felt soaked with terror and his vision pinholed and shimmered,
and he tried to feel his blood and instead tripped on his own frantic feet and splayed
face-first and struck his jaw on ice-cold marble.
So this is what it feels like to lose control.
Michael scrambled desperately up and into a hallway to the left of the statues just
as Jopek’s fourth shot struck the statue’s hand like some unthinkable stigmata. Michael
cast one last look back up at the ring of the rotunda above, over the railing of which
Captain Jopek smiled like a portrait painted on a ceiling of a cathedral, like a man
having the time of his life. Michael wasn’t dead, only because Captain Jopek didn’t
want him dead. Not yet.