The End Games (35 page)

“Do you remember when I told you that my dad was a pharmacist?” Holly said.

Michael walked toward the four or five Bellows that were staggering toward him and
Holly from fifty yards away.

“What are you doing?” said Holly.

“Holly, just shut up. You’ve messed up enough—”

“My dad
made
the cure, Michael!”
she said.

Michael blinked.
“What?”

“I’m trying to tell you that he was the leader of the CDC team, and he made it! And—and—the
day everything got overrun, we got separated and so many of the buses out of town
got swamped. Hank and I didn’t know what happened to our dad—we didn’t know if he
got out safe, or if he was bit. I don’t even know if the CDC had had time to get the
cure out of the city.

“Hank and I were alone. Jopek said he’d help us find the lab. He said we had to keep
it a secret because
he
was the leader. I know that was stupid, but I just wanted to get it so, so bad. I
needed
to hang on to that. I needed—”

“Jopek’s training, yeah, I remember.”

“No. Yeah,” she said. “But . . . I needed
hope
, Michael.”

Michael didn’t question whether the disgust he felt was real then; for that word,
hope
, was hideous on his heart. Mom lived behind a hope of her life changing; Bobbie hoped
to run her fingers over her husband’s smile one more time; the Rapture worshipped
their undead hopes and let them devour them. But hope was a weak wish, Michael knew
now: a dream from which you wouldn’t let the real things wake you.

People say they have hope for the future, but no they don’t. Because hope wasn’t about
the future, not truly. Hope was:
make me feel better now
. Hope was:
tell me, this second, that I’ll be all right
. Hope was:
tell me I don’t have to be different, but things will be
. Hope made you feel better by letting you feel a false future.

Michael forced himself to think of Patrick. He looked away, back down the street,
at the nearing Bellows—now almost a dozen of them.

God, where was the Rapture?

“When the captain asked me today how to take the antidote to make it work,” Holly
said, “I said I’d only tell him if he gave you a dose first. I’ll tell you how to
make it work, right now, but please—promise me something.”

Michael whispered to the dead.

They heard it. They echoed the message: the next Bellow picking it up, casting it
to the next and next, carrying it away like a series of undead tin-can telephones
strung across the city.

Heeeere! The sooooooldier heeeeeeere! Baaaannnk!

—Shooooot soooooldier!—

“Promise what?” he said.

“That you were lying last night. About there being no other soldiers that can take
us to Richmond. Right?”

She touched him again, looking at him like she had in the middle of the night, watching
the Kanawha River, that bare and desperate confession of want for Before.

He did not say:
I never saw soldiers.

He did not say:
Jopek told me we’re alone.

If she needs hope to get her through this, fine. The hope’s false, but without it?
She won’t trust me to get through this, and we won’t get
any
future.

He said: “Y-yeah. There are soldiers.”

Holly’s brow knitted, and she nodded, and tears of relief shimmered to her eyes, and
Michael remembered then, from the pure unhidden gratitude on her face, how much he
liked her. And as she looked at him with trust, he pretty much hated his life.

Am I doing the right thing?
Michael thought.
Am I?

“Thanks,” Holly breathed shakily. “You’re a good guy.”

I lie for the same reason as you,
said Jopek’s voice in his head.
Because I want to.

And now Jopek was coming out of the plane. Michael put the hood of his space suit
back on.

“You have to inject it at the site of the wound,”
Holly whispered to Michael urgently, and spun around to face Jopek.

“You said you’d be right back,” Jopek growled from the airplane door.

Blocking the view from Jopek with her body, Holly grabbed Michael’s hand and gave
it two squeezes.

Michael thought, with a painful ache in his heart:
Facebook update—Michael is IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH A GIRL HE CAN’T STOP LYING TO.

“I lied,” Holly replied.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

They both did, easily enough.

Jopek asked what the hell was taking so long and they told him what he needed to be
told. By now the Bellows’ imitations of Michael’s message had blended into each other,
and there was only a sound of fire in the alley where the mines had blown.

Through the airplane and out the cockpit, Jopek kept the gun on Michael.

Back in the lobby of the First Bank of Charleston, with the gun still aimed at Michael’s
belly, Jopek approached the tunnel and spied down it. Holly stood halfway between
the two of them, as if still on neither team, her eyes nervously cast down. The last
of the day streamed in through the high, stained-glass windows.

When are the Rapture people going to come?

Michael stared at the sun-struck colors in a window to his right. Words began to form
inside him.
Please, just let us get out of here. Let me
out
of this.
He realized that he was praying . . . and as he did, the glass darkened. A shadow
had passed over the window—a movement so momentary it might have been imaginary. Until
it stealthily moved again.

Michael’s mouth became cotton.

The sniper setting up,
he saw in his mind.

The human form in the window shrunk, lying down.
Hold B to enter Prone Position,
he thought wildly.

Michael was going to kill a man.

The idea slit him, and thoughts he could not stop rushed through. It wasn’t him pulling
the trigger, but Michael was going to cause Jopek’s life to leak from him. He had
to, he knew that. But the idea still made him sick.

The shadow on the glass grew a line: the dark limb of a barrel. The shadow snuck across
the floor of the bank, laying itself behind Jopek’s feet.

I’ll get the cure. I’ll keep everyone safe.

Not everyone
, his mind said. You.
You never keep everyone safe. You can’t even keep
one person
safe.

Michael swore he heard the click of a safety snicking off.

Patrick’s not safe yet. But he will be. In the end.

Holly moved in front of Jopek just as Michael was closing his eyes against the coming
fire. Her dark expression told her motive instantly: she was furious. She was going
to demand Jopek help Patrick, or else.

Won’t work, Holly! You do not KNOW HIM!

Michael found he was holding his breath.

Michael dived for her, catching Holly at the waist, and they flew through space.

A second thud followed their own: a brick, tossed from outside, splashing through
the window.

The brick landed in a crash of color.

Jopek spun. Alarmed, not yet comprehending. He looked at them. At the splayed rainbow.
His stare then trailed up into the new shaft of sun. It was blazing him, transforming
his face and, for one single second in that light, he looked almost like an angel.

The first shot came with a rocket of sound, a solid crack that made Holly kick out
her feet on the floor beside Michael in a dance of terror. Shock registered on Jopek’s
features as the floor tiles at his feet blew up in a storm of particles.

Jopek had been blinking blindly in a spotlight . . . 
and the shot hadn’t come close.

Jopek leapt out of the dusk light. In one single movement, he rolled into a crouched
shooting stance, aiming for the high gunman through the shattered pane.

A second shot rang. And what followed was a sound Michael had never heard before:

Jopek’s pain.

The captain’s face contorted with naked surprise. His rifle fell, discharging. The
bullet had taken him in the left leg, midway up the shin. The spot became a sudden
rose.

DID IT!
Triumph, frightening and powerful, roared in Michael.

Jopek tried to pull his sidearm pistol from his belt, but the silhouette fired again
and Jopek was grabbing a curve of blood that traced down his screaming face.

Captain Horace Jopek collapsed.

Enemy Team down,
Michael thought madly.
I did it, he’s down, Enemy freaking
down
!

Michael’s blood towered up his throat and seemed to drive him onto his feet and he
thought,
BRB, Holly,
even as she screamed,
“Wait, Michael, wait!”
Jopek’s pistol had skidded across the floor and Michael grabbed it and put it in
his spacesuit pocket, and he ran and dived into the tunnel. Darkness ate up his vision
through his panting-fogged faceplate, rocks sliced through the knees and palms of
his suit; now gun sounds from the sniper spiraled after him and he flinched and something
shifted in the stone layers overhead: a chattering of rock crashing down. Michael
squeezed forward, scrambling insanely and, a second later, shot out the other end
of the tunnel.

The bank was a pharaoh’s tomb.

Bills and coins in every direction, dust and debris covering all. Brass-rimmed nameplates
still sat on rows of parallel desks, winking dully. On one desk, a water-bird paperweight
dipped down and up, down and up. Electricity came and went in pulses, desk lamps and
ceiling lights crackled on and off; computers kept booting momentarily before the
power shorted, the Apple start-up
gong!
echoing like some eerie electronic doom-song. Flickering light, lots of shadows.
Oh, too many.

Holly’s voice from the other end of the tunnel: “Michael!”

“Come
on
, Holly! The tunnel’s safe!”

“I—but—” she said.

Why wasn’t she just
coming
?

She’s just afraid,
he forced himself to think.
She’ll come. No time to wait. Move!

“Bub!” he called across the shadowy lobby.

Only his echo. Where did they even
keep
vaults? Basement? Some kind of manager’s office? Behind the counter—

Yes!

“
One-two-three!
” Michael called as a precaution, but he realized he didn’t know if the Shriek would
echo as a Bellow would. A banner over the counter read
BEFORE YOU CHANGE YOUR DREAMS, GET A SECOND OPINION!
and Michael dashed, hurtled over the counter. He landed awkwardly on his side, tried
to pull out the pistol in his pocket; it got caught in the space-suit fabric. He grappled
desperately for another weapon, came up with two things, a plastic capsule used to
zip cash through pneumatic tubes to drive-thru customers, and a pen on a chain; he
chose the pen, wielded it knifelike, whipped around, and saw nothing.

Except the vault.

Tens and twenties and hundreds eddied over the dozen pneumatic bullets that lay between
him and the vault at the end of the tellers’ lane. The vault door was no heist-movie
prop: no great steel circle, like a stone rolled in front of a cave. But it
was
steel, and larger than Michael, with a spoked wheel dead center like a spiked eye.

He said, “Hey!” padding to his feet. “Hey-hey-hey! Hey, Bubbo-Gum!”

A large dent on the vault door—an impact crater—twisted his reflection. There were
thin scratches marring the door, too.
Shriek scratches! It tried to get at Patrick in there! Bub’s really here!

Without thinking, Michael threw himself into the door with everything he had.

It didn’t even buck.

He fell back from it, shoulder throbbing.

His panting fogged the faceplate.

Michael wiped at the faceplate madly, realized wiping the outside would do nothing,
felt for the suit-back, and tore the hood off messily, the zipper screaming.

He threw himself against the door again—

—
and it wouldn’t open again
. It was like a door in a video game that was not designed to be opened.

“Bub!”

There was no reply, save a dry clicking behind him. Michael tensed. But it was only
a mini rock slide on the debris.

Calm it. Calm calm calm.

But in his brain he saw:
Patrick, clawing the door, wheezing ’cause there wasn’t air in there, fingertips bleeding.
How long had Patrick been in there? Michael guessed,
Eight minutes and forty-three seconds
. Excellent skill, very helpful.

He threw an inarticulate yell of rage, but it was more than a yell, was more like
a protest. He had done everything: he had rescued Patrick through a series of Hells,
had talked Holly to his side, he’d killed a dark genius with a sniper he’d conjured
from nowhere. He had mutated their future.

And now, now Patrick was in there, with no air to breathe—

How,
said a small voice,
did he
get
in there?

It was as if someone—or Something—had dropped the thought into his head.

Patrick couldn’t have opened the vault. The door was too heavy.

The Shriek hit the door and shut it,
he imaged.

PULL IT open! You
have to PULL
!

The vault door swung open lightly in Michael’s hands.

Not only oxygen had been sucked from the vault: time had, too. As the door swung open,
a terror, beneath the neat rows of safe-deposit boxes, was revealed eternally. It
was far worse than Cady Gibson. It was Patrick. His face was blue, pinched. He wasn’t
breathing.

This wasn’t real. It wasn’t true. His brother wasn’t sitting here, dead.