The End Games (8 page)

He took a step forward, let it become a trot, and offered the priest his hand.

The priest’s finger tensed on the trigger. The crowd didn’t gasp: they seemed to
become
a gasp, going taut and drawing back.

“Stop,” the priest said.

“Sure thing,” Michael said.

He stopped but leaned in, ignored the gasping crowd, said seriously, “You’re right,
though. The man in charge sent me. And if you hurt me, sir, I think he’s gonna be . . . upset.”

The priest’s beetle eyes narrowed with suspicion. “But why would he send a child?”

Who’s ‘he’? Doesn’t matter. Keep going.

“Hey, Coalmount, how ya doing?” Michael greeted the crowd.

One time, the governor had come to talk to his high school; as he’d walked to the
auditorium stage, he shook everybody’s hand. Michael imitated that now, the politician’s
winky-winky, grabbing limp fingers. “Everyone eating okay? Need any food? Anybody
need clean undies? Besides me.”

Michael felt the air shift on his neck, knew what was coming, and had to fight not
to smile at things going according to his plan.

The stock of the rifle slammed down between his shoulder blades. He staggered forward,
screamed for half a second in his closed mouth. He looked at Patrick, saw him between
the passenger’s and driver’s seats; Patrick gasped. Which was good—Michael
wanted
Patrick to see that these people were breaking the Rules, even violently.
Because in a second I can show you that you’re still safe, Patrick, that even with
these people breaking the Rules, The Game is still under control. Just keep watching,
Bub.

But Michael suddenly thought:
Don’t push Rulon too far! If it goes too far, Patrick will
know
—

“Oh, you
a-hole
,” said Michael to the priest.

“The foul-minded boy! The sin-thick boy!” His teeth glowed like yellow tombstones.
“Do you know what I believe? I believe you are alone. Why would he send a child?”

Now a teary-voiced man in the crowd shouted, “Yes, Rulon! Yes! Get
that
one!”

“Wait,” Michael muttered, but the priest had no intention of waiting.

Rulon began to raise his rifle. He looked to the sky.

Feel your blood. Calm down.

“Accept the sacrifice,” the priest intoned, “of the one who spilled Your Chosen’s
bloo—”

Michael reached into his pocket and drew the old-school cell phone, powering it on,
hitting the number pad, saying into the phone, “They’re about to hurt me, sir!”

And the sound—
yes-yes—
issued forth from the speaker like a small cannon.

“I order you to stop!
” called the Game Master.

Blink.

“
Sssssttoooooppp!”
wailed the Bellows from the woods.

Rulon squinted down at the silver phone in Michael’s hand, as if at some unholy artifact.

Michael tapped a button. The Game Master’s rich accent barked out even louder from
the speakerphone.
“Again, I order you to
stop
!”

“Who is that?” said Rulon.

“Ask him yourself,” replied Michael.

Rulon didn’t.

“These are your orders!” the phone replied, anyway.

“The man in charge,” Michael said. “The master,” he said louder, for Patrick’s sake.

“Lies,” said Rulon. But he sounded uncertain. And Michael felt a thrill of
yes-yes
, because the crowd wasn’t looking to Rulon. They were looking at the phone.

“No one is our master,” said Rulon calmly to the crowd. “
We
are our master. Who that man is, I don’t know. When the Lord began purifying, we
were left to do His good work. We were left to shepherd the first risen Chosen until
His Horsemen come. We were left—”

Michael put the phone to his ear, turned off the speaker. “He doesn’t believe m—”

“Enough!
”

“Report back to me, Michael!”
said the Game Master.

Someone in the crowd, concerned, said, “Rulon? Who
is
it?”

Rulon watched the phone.

Michael said into the phone, “I’m here, sir. This man, Rulon, still looks a little
trigger happy. Are there reinforcements?”

Hit a button. Speakerphone again:
“There are soldiers nearby!”

“Awesome to know,” Michael said, and he began to back toward his station wagon.

Rage and confusion tumbled over Rulon’s face. Rulon lowered the gun, raised it, then
put it down permanently.

Beat you. And you can’t believe I can do it. Just like Ron.

See, Bub? We
are
safe.

His fingers looped the door handle and he nodded toward the crowd, winked, gave a
thumbs-up. There was no car alarm this time. Patrick peered up through the gap between
the front seats, and Michael had an almost uncontrollable urge to low-five him—to
touch
him.

“Boy?” Rulon had taken a couple steps toward Michael, and for some reason looked slyly,
dangerously pleased.“I have only one question. If the man in charge sent you, what
is his name?”

“I—”

The voice on the phone crackled. It could have been static. But it wasn’t.
“End of your recording,”
a robot voice on the phone said.
“Play your phone recording again? Press one to play, press two to delete, press three
to record a new—”

How long did it take to close the phone? Too long.

No,
thought Michael.
Messed it up, I messed it up.

His eyes locked with Rulon’s, electricity leaping between them as the cell phone’s
voice recorder cut off—

—and Michael slammed the driver’s door into Rulon’s groin and dived into his car.
He threw the gear into
DRIVE
, hoping to outrun the truth:

The voice on the phone had been Michael’s own, not a phone call but a recording he’d
made last night when Patrick was asleep. Because, of course, Michael
was
the Game Master. And there was no Game.

Michael had made it up.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Had Patrick heard? That was all that mattered.

Please frakking no. Oh
please
no.

“Bub?”

Michael lay low, out of gun sight, driving the Volvo blindly as the attackers’ faces
and arms struck the windows. Hands grabbed in through the empty windshield.

“Bub?”
Michael repeated.

“Get theeeeemmm!”

“Grab the big one!”

“Move! Out of the way! I’ll cut the tires, let me cut —”

And a gun crack split the dusk.

Michael’s rearview mirror ripped free and flipped onto the passenger seat. He spasmed,
trapping his scream in his mouth. Rulon was reloading, perhaps twenty yards in front
of them, but there was something more dangerous already inside the car: the tears
brimming in his brother’s eyes.

Patrick was hiding in the footwell behind the passenger seat. No: no, he was
cowering
in it. He clutched his Ultraman, trying to look tough, but Michael saw the truth.
The way Bub panted, thin and ragged. The way he rhythmically bit his lip, hard enough
to split the skin and bring a bead of blood. The way his eyes were going blank, like
a void, like a TV screen the second after the power goes out, like he was tumbling
down a long dark hole in himself, a hole that had opened when the world as he understood
it cracked wide open under his feet.

Patrick was trying not to Freak.

Why why why?
Was he upset because of the gunshots and the crazy people, or because he had heard
that the “Game Master” on the phone was only a recording of his brother’s voice? Did
he know that Michael had invented The Game, had lied every moment of every day and
night since Halloween? Did he know that the only reason The Game existed was to keep
him away from that ledge inside himself?

“Bub . . . ’sup?”

Patrick’s gaze widened and snapped over Michael’s shoulder. Michael looked and saw
a man dashing from an alley to their right, raw lips pulled in a grin, pistol in hand.
Michael gritted his teeth and heaved the wheel, speeding left, onto a road that shot
off of Main Street, away from the man. They were leaving Coalmount, past the spot
where Michael had checked it out with his binoculars, past the rusted sign that asked
them to
PLE SE COME AGA N!
Gonna pass, thanks for the invite.

Michael reached the country route that had brought them to Coalmount yesterday, choosing
the opposite direction from which they had arrived, hoping—oh, please—that it would
take him to the Others Rulon feared.

“Michael . . . ?” Patrick said softly.

“Yo!” Michael said, his voice shaking.

“It’s wrong, it’s wrong
.
”

What’s
wrong
?!
Another gunshot at their back. This one took the back right window, splashing glass.

Patrick cried,
“Breakin’ the Rules is against the Rules! Other people are supposed to HELP US!”

And Michael slid in his seat as relief made him putty.
Oh thank God, he didn’t hear. He doesn’t know. He’s just scared.

But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to Freak.

Because the only reason The Game keeps him from Freaking is that he thinks it’s all
safe
! He thinks the Bellows can’t really
hurt
you or him, that there are Rules—that you are his safe place, that you can always
protect
him.

And now, people
were
trying to hurt them, people were shattering the Rules, shattering the world.

And these people will make him Freak and disappear into himself—or they will just
kill him
—unless you get out of here, fast, very.

Patrick’s eyes screamed what Michael now asked himself:

What are you going to do?

Click
went the headlights to life automatically, as the station wagon’s sensors registered
nightfall. The Bellows had noticed, too: they sifted from the woods on either side
of this rutted country route, screaming on the roadside like phantoms in an urban
legend. Wouldn’t be long before they clogged the road.

Think
.
Think think think.

In the rearview mirror, Rulon’s maniacs were coming. They had boarded four-wheelers,
motorcycles, dirt bikes. And their headlamps were gaining.

“Are they
chasing
us?” Patrick whined.

“What do you freaking think?” Michael snapped.

Patrick began chewing on his palm. Patrick’s voice, shamed and quavering, said, “You’re
mad at me.”

Oh, good effing move.

Michael swerved, avoiding a child Bellow in a ballerina tutu. “No, I’m not.”

“Then why did you yell?” said Patrick.

“’Cause I’m excited.”

A heavy thud, and a smashing of a headlight’s glass. He’d hit a Bellow. Michael slowed
for a split second, shocked.
And the motorcycles gained
.

“Michael, I want Mommy. I w-w-want her a l-l-l-little.”

No, Bub, you want her a lot, and you want her now. And guess what? I do, too. And
now you’re going to start screaming, and I can’t give you a pill to calm you down
right now, so this is what is called The End—

Michael, desperate, blurted: “Let’s go talk to the soldiers!”

Patrick blinked:
What the?!

“Yeah, Bub, we’ll tell on the cheaters—I saw soldiers last night, I wanted to surprise
you—they’re with the Game Master—
maybe we’ll even get enough extra points and finish tonight
.”

And how are you going to do that?
Michael thought.
How are you going to “meet the Game Master”?

Shut up! I’ll figure it out. I. Will. Eventually. Soon. Figure. That. Shit. Out.

“Are they close?” Patrick said, voice shaky.

“They’re super close, next door basically, it’ll just take a couple minutes, okay?”

Nothing. Quiet.

“Oka—?”

“. . . Is that a good-guy sign . . . ?”
Patrick whispered.

Michael turned his head just in time to see the sign zip past: a sign shaped like
a badge, attached to a metal pole.

That,
he thought,
is an interstate sign
.

His entire brain exploded.

Three weeks.

Three weeks.

Three weeks.

Three weeks they’d traveled on the pitted back roads, searching for an interstate
entrance. Three weeks in the gray nether-zones of his useless map. Three weeks in
the mountains, and they’d only seen one entrance, and that on-ramp had been clustered
with empty cars, with razor wire strung across the road.

The only thing on this on-ramp was moon-bright snow.

Breathe.

He turned onto the ramp.

Uuuuuuupppp
, it felt like;
uuuupppppp
the incline of the ramp, the spectacular fantastic incredible on-ramp,
yes-yes
, zooming as if for a takeoff, gliding with it
now
.

Snow cometed into the car, but that was nothing, because he could look out and see
the whole night in between those white streaks. He fit into the moment. The world
slid into clarity around him. He struck a patch of black ice and instantly corrected
the car’s shimmy with a flick of the wheel.

The maniacs chasing him didn’t understand: Michael was used to being chased. He’d
been outmaneuvering danger a lot longer than just since October 31.

“Bub,” he said, smiling, “I need your help. I need you to be a shooter. I need you
to be, basically, Buzz Lightyear.”

“Huh?” said Patrick.

Michael passed the flashlight and the orange toy gun he’d gotten from the office over
his shoulder, just something to occupy Patrick until they got away.