The End Games (43 page)

Goose chills screamed up Michael’s back.

With a sensation familiar from a hundred childhood nightmares—his vision being sucked,
against every wish, toward some grim, waiting horror—Michael looked into the descending
heart of the mine.

Past the mound of coal Rulon had brought down, something had come out of the depths.

Michael thought,
It’s the Shrieks!
but he immediately knew that wasn’t right. The Things invading the outer rim of light
were eyeless, yes, and they hung upon the walls and ceiling like pale death-spiders.
But they were not Shrieks, not any more than they were still Bellows.

Michael and Patrick were in the mine with something new, something ancient, and God
help them.

Cady Gibson, clattering on the ceiling, led them, smiling its damned, everlasting
smile.

Cady, who had entered this mine as a nine-year-old kid, still bore a ruined memory
of the face, almost hurtfully beautiful, of the child it had been.

Cady Gibson, endgame mutation, was more bone than boy. The flesh of its arms was stripped
entirely. Its fingers were a fan of fine, bleached blades. In its floating ribs, gray
lung-sacks flapped. Raw tendon—taut and red—spiraled over the bones like the strings
of a marionette brought to jigging life by some demoniacally grinning puppet master.
Cady Gibson, the Terror, crawled across the black sky toward Michael and his brother,
pealing forth cry after cry: a little boy leading its own hellish children outside
to play.

“Michael, he’s the bad boy!”
Patrick screamed.

Michael stood up, his knees threatening to betray him. And in that infinite, black
instant, Michael caught a glimpse of Something just past Cady—another creature, clittering
along the ceiling of the mine shaft—that he knew would haunt the corridors of his
dreams forever.

It was a Hell-dream, a beast of shock-white flesh. It had golden-rimmed eyes with
slits for pupils. It had a red and lolling tongue that dangled and clocked from its
mouth like a long, burst vein. With a shattering clarity, Michael understood: Cady
and all the Shrieks had returned to this mine so They could
get this creature
. They had come to retrieve the Thing that had birthed the virus and ended the Earth,
the Thing that had infected Cady in the first place.

Oh God, that’s their MOTHER!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Patrick burst into tears, and Michael lifted him into his arms and turned in the quaking
mine shaft. He dashed around the corner, seeing the lighted rectangle of the entrance
a billion miles up ahead. The fractured support beams were snapping now in the force
of the stampede: Michael wove through a collapsing storm of earth and stone. The creatures
howled in rage as the caving ceiling slowed their flight, but this was still like
trying to outrun the wind. And Michael held on to Patrick as tightly as he had ever
held anything, as tight as his own heart.

“Michael?” Patrick sobbed into his ear.

Answer him. You might not get to again.
“Yeah?” Michael breathed.

Patrick said: “I love you.”

The end of the mine, twenty feet away, ten, six, three—

The dead at their back, their shrieks deafening, air pressure flying like poisonous
waves—

And then—Michael never understood how—he ran out of the mine.

Did it matter? No. Nowhere to run: he looked back into the mine and saw the Shrieks
bursting through the fallen ceiling, and even if he got into the Hummer right this
moment, it was too late—the field lights dazzled Michael’s eyes—his ears were ringing—

“Holly!”
Patrick gasped.

Something was coming, straight across the quarry field, almost
bouncing
on the ground. Something big.
Balloon!
Not quite inflated, the jack-o’-lantern aircraft, piloted by Holly, its basket half
dragging across the snowy ground toward them. Michael’s heart burst in amazement.

“Patrick! Michael!” Holly called.
“Come on!”

Wind gusted, throwing snow from the peaks of the coal mounds, snapping the inflating
pumpkin face to the left, parallel with the rock wall containing the entrance to the
mine. Michael sprinted to catch up. Holly released the burner for a moment to reach
out for them, but Michael shouted,
“No no, keep filling the balloon!”
and he desperately tossed Patrick into the basket. He placed his good hand on the
wicker rim and there came another gust of wind, and the jerk of the balloon nearly
pulled his arm out of its socket. He screamed, but held on, the lip of the basket
now as high as his chest. He leapt with all his strength, pulling himself up, over
the wicker brim.

He tumbled in.

“Up up, go go go!”

“Absolutely,” Holly breathed shakily. She yanked down the overhead handle harder,
enlarging the blue burner flame.

And slowly their balloon began to lift toward the sky.

They ascended, fifteen feet, twenty.
Holy crap. We . . . I . . .

We made it.
The thought shimmered in his mind, nearly too huge and beautiful to grasp.
We
made it!

Michael looked over the edge of the basket. Fifty feet up now. The new creatures were
vomiting out from the mouth of the mine, small in the fluorescent field lights.

Cady Gibson emerged, stopped, gazed up with those ancient eyes.

The monster couldn’t grab them. Not now.
Not when we’re flying—

But suddenly Michael’s hope threatened to flicker out.

No. What happens when we have to land?

And that was when he turned and saw Patrick holding his orange gun in his hands.

“Bad bad guys,”
Patrick hissed viciously. His eyes glittered with vengeance. It was not just fury
at someone who wasn’t playing The Game right: it was something beyond childhood, it
was full hatred, grown-up’s hatred, and utterly without innocence.

Patrick hooked one arm over the edge of the basket so that he could look to the ground,
aiming the bright plastic gun down to the lead creature, as if to shoot Cady Gibson
with a make-believe projectile from “the weapon” the Game Master had given him.

Michael thought,
That’s just a toy, Patrick. Just a toy
.

But then a secret understanding, both horrible and wonder-struck, fit into place inside
Michael’s heart, like clockwork.

It’s
not
a toy!

Michael grabbed Patrick’s wrist, steering Bub’s weapon upward half an inch at the
last moment. He did not even know why; it was simply as if something were directing
his hand as much as he guided his brother’s.

Patrick’s finger tensed, and he roared with the biggest voice Michael had ever heard
him use:

“REACH FER THE SKYYYYYYY!”

And Patrick pulled the trigger of his flare gun.

A cry of light; a sparkler scream.

A fiery red contrail blazed forth from the barrel. The flare gun launched its glittering
charge across the West Virginia night, a fizzing, dazzling, screeching light, like
the racing sparks of a fuse strung across the world. Yes, like the fuse of some unimaginable
bomb.

The flare struck Cady Gibson.

There was a sudden floating fire-rose on the dead boy’s chest, like a hideous fake,
where a heart would be.

That was when the mountain blew up.

“OH SHI—”
Patrick screamed as the first flame pyred out of the mine.

Michael grabbed at Bub and Holly, and threw them both down to the floor of the basket
as it happened. He had been wrong about the “toy” gun, but Holly had been right about
the gas: it
was
there, packed within all the subterranean nooks and catacombs of the mine, like patient,
invisible dynamite. And as the flare ignited it, there was a tide of fire that even
the monsters could not outrun.

Roaring yellow-red light filled the world, making Michael blind and deaf. In the storm
of heat, he found Patrick and Holly and hugged them to him, to let them know that
he was there. And they hugged him back, to let him know that they were, too.

AFTER THE END . . .

After their balloon had hurled and pitched in the sky like a bouy in a hurricane;
after the earth-tearing chain of explosions stopped; after the light and heat began
to fade; after Michael and Holly sat up, stunned silent but asking
Did we just
 . . . 
save the . . . ?

After Patrick gaped at the flare gun in his hand like a kid blinking at the fist that
has finally fought back against the bully, but also somehow accidentally killed him
. . .

After Patrick burst into tears that Michael and Holly could do nothing to stop . .
.

After the wind carried them into the night, and the flame-filled quarry began to look
no larger than embers. After Patrick finally, simply exhausted himself and fell into
an uneasy sleep. After Michael and Holly rigged the burner-handle down with a rope
from the canvas bag labeled
CAPTAIN H. C. JOPEK
, which Holly had grabbed from the back of the Hummer (the bag had safety flares,
tourniquets, a blanket, radio, “space food,” batteries, and a
Playboy
magazine, which Holly rolled her eyes at and flung out of the basket). After they
asked each other,
Did we just end this? I mean, is that possible—if all the Shrieks came home, did we
just kill them all?
Holly said she didn’t know, that she really doubted it. But Michael saw the hope
in her eyes. He recognized it, from what he almost felt in his own heart.

Maybe all the
Shrieks
did die, though,
Holly said.
I mean, since Cady was the thing that changed them
into
Shrieks, right? So maybe the only Things left are . . . like, Bellows that are scattered
and by themselves.

She added:
’Cause it
couldn’t
have been all of them, right?

Right?

After the moon rose and the storm calmed and they drifted through a star-shot sky,
wondering at the world that was slipping by in the smooth—silent?—darkness far below
their feet:

Holly told Michael they should sleep in shifts. Michael tried to say he couldn’t sleep,
and for a while he couldn’t; it was too quiet up here. So he turned on the army radio
Holly had brought, and the white noise at least relaxed him. And he did sleep. And,
same as always, dreamed of Mom.

It was Christmas morning, and thick
,
white flakes were falling past his window in a lightly moaning wind. He could smell
pine, and the cookies (lemon) Mom had left for Rudolph. As he leapt from bed, he was
aware of the cold on his ankles at the ends of his too-short pajamas. Mom stood at
the bottom of the stairs. Her hair was drawn down in front of her face, and Michael
had a terrible feeling that if she looked up, she wasn’t going to have any eyes.

On the bottom stair, between her feet, lay a gift topped by a looping red bow. Inside
the box, a sheet of paper, with a single word. And when Michael looked up with a question
on his lips, Mom had disappeared. He was scared, lost-in-a-department-store scared.
He came to realize that the howling outside was not a wind, but people at the windows.
Gray-faced people. He shouted, but Mom wouldn’t answer. Finally, he looked at the
paper.

The word on it read:

Pocket

Snow.

He could feel snow.

Michael lay in the cold, then sniffed. He opened his eyes, looking around, brushing
the flakes off his nose with the back of his hand. He wasn’t totally surprised to
feel tears there, too.

Purple light, over the rim of the basket. Snow falling gently. He could see the pink
underbellies of clouds that told him it was almost sunrise—though the clouds were
a lot closer than usual. He watched one that looked like a lowercase
t
drift past. He started to sit up, but noticed Holly’s head lying against his shoulder,
her eyes closed, her breath steady.
Sleepin’ on the job
,
lady,
he thought, grinning. He hesitated a second, then thought,
Well, it’s okay ’cause she kissed me first,
and he leaned in and kissed her, quick and light, on the edge of her lips. Man. Seriously:
so
soft
. Holly shifted in her sleep, the side of her mouth tugging into a little half smile.

Michael thought:
pocket
.

Pocket? What’s in my pocket?

Patrick was sitting across from him, looking at the wicker floor, his back against
the opposite wall, one knee drawn to his chest. In his hands, he held the vial that
Holly had stuffed into Michael’s pocket in the First Bank of Charleston.

The ropes creaked overhead. They drifted. Patrick looked up at Michael, then back
down at the wicker floor, his lips twitching and pursing. He seemed to be gathering
something to say in his head. After perhaps ten minutes, he said softly, “There’s
no more Game Master, is there? Everyone can cheat now, huh?”

Michael watched him, unsure how to respond. He lifted Holly’s head from his shoulder,
positioning it gently against a corner. He scooted toward Bub, and the question within
Michael was: What lie should he try to assemble for Patrick? But he realized he did
not know. Right then, sitting across from his little brother in the waking sky, Patrick
seemed a kind of mystery to him.
How did you save yourself, Bub?
Michael thought wonderingly.
How did you fall into yourself and come out? I tried so hard to save you; I did my
best. But I didn’t control this.

“Do you think the Bellows cheated where Mommy is, too?” Patrick asked.

Michael felt his pulse, his breath, searching his stillness: the old automatic habit,
waiting for some secret aspect of himself to present him with the Truth about the
future of his Game. . . . But nothing came this time, of course. That was all over.