Todd (25 page)

None of this matters to Todd.

"Cosmic Rending!" he
announces, revealing the card he asked Alan about just before they began playing.
He is bouncing in his seat, eyes glowing, because he has his father in an
impossible situation: if Alan chooses to let him advance a Realm, Todd will win
the game, but if Alan lets him devour a Mortal, he will destroy his father's
best card.

"That's bullshit," Alan
mutters, but he can't suppress a grin as he says it. It's exactly the kind of
situation Alan had always hoped the game would be robust enough to develop, and
not only is it manifesting, but it's his
son
that made it happen. It's
hard not to feel proud. "Fine. Devour. You evil little bastard."

Todd cackles, grabs Alan's best
card, and throws it in the discard pile. "Now there's no way—" He
cuts himself off and restarts. "How you gonna win
now?
" The
trash talk is stilted and awkward, but completely earnest. In its own way, it's
as adorable as the kid's front teeth.

The TV is forgotten. The snow, the
cold—even the Blurs fall away. Todd kicks his father's butt and Alan starts
shuffling the decks.

"I think ten Realms is too
many," Alan muses. "It's supposed to be kind of a fast-paced game. It
seems like it takes too long to win."

"Yeah," Todd says.
"Maybe like seven?"

"I was even thinking five.
But let's try seven first."

They draw new hands and play
again.

96

In the morning it snows again, but
Alan risks heading outside to loot some more drinks from the sales building. He
also confirms that the giant tank he saw the day before is, indeed, full of
diesel. The RV burns through gas faster than he would've hoped, especially
considering they didn't even drive the thing yesterday. But with a massive
supply tank like that, they should be able to keep it running for a very long
time.

They have 100 or so blank cards in
the Chaos Vector box, and when he gets back inside, Alan finds Todd making new
cards. He opens his mouth to warn his son about making sure the card is
balanced—he doesn't want to waste any blanks on a stupid fantasy card that
instantly wins the game or anything—but goes to take a shower instead.

His trust is well-placed. Todd's
new cards present seemingly simple choices, but their effects over the course
of a game back Alan into a corner. Alan takes the opportunity between games to
make a few new cards of his own, and Chaos Vector continues to evolve.

"You're really good at
this," he tells Todd that afternoon. "I mean, gods, if I'd—"

If I'd known how good you were
at this, I would've had you downstairs with me the whole time.
The words
leave a hollow in his heart, and he doesn't speak them. They lead to a place
full of pain, a place he doesn't want to visit.

We're here now,
he thinks.
We
have it right now.

Todd smiles at him. "It's a
really cool game. I can't believe my
dad
made it."

I didn't,
Alan thinks.
I
screwed it up. I never finished. I was too pathetic. My dad was right about me.
But the praise from his son is the simplest, most honest kind; too pure to
be undone by these old defenses. Alan blinks, his heart quickening.
"Thanks, Todd." He coughs, glances away. "That, uh... that means
a lot to me."

"You're welcome." Todd
sighs. "I'm just sad, you know—that no one's gonna get to play it."

If this had been Alan's thought,
it would've hurt him. But this is Todd's pain, and Alan refutes it at once.
"What? What do you mean?
We're
gonna play it." He pauses,
thinking. "That means
everyone's
gonna play it."

97

Days pass, then weeks. Todd's
ankle heals, and the frostbite on both of their faces improves. Using colored
pencils and a blank notebook he packed, Todd writes up the instructions for
Chaos Vector.

They start to run low on food,
though. One morning they pile into the Ford and risk a trip up the road to look
for supplies.

In daylight, with a solid base of
operations behind them, the experience is far less frightening. Alan still
keeps his speed down, but within half an hour they find a farmhouse. The
rolling yard is dotted with pines and sycamores, and there is a small
playground—a slide, a swing, and a sandbox—in the back.

But the barn walls are covered in
blue moss, and the stuff streaks the side of the house. There are patches of it
in the field, too, showing through the snow like spots of leprosy, and a few of
the trees are completely coated.

Obviously a sky worm hasn't been
through here. This is more like the organic stuff Alan saw at Crown Foods. In
its way, though, it's just as disheartening.

They climb out of the truck, and
Todd exclaims as he sees the little playground. "Oh! A park!" He
starts to run that way, but Alan grabs him.

"Let's make sure it's safe
first. All right?"

They hit the jackpot with the farm
pantry: canned goods, oatmeal, vacuum-sealed jerky. Alan scoops it all into
bags, then indulges himself with some soap and shampoo, even some triple-ply
toilet paper.

In the bathroom medicine cabinet,
he finds a bottle of sleeping pills.

He hesitates, old instincts
warring in his head. Then he grabs them.

"All right. I think that's
enough for now. You find anything good?"

"No video games," Todd
says with a touch of regret. "Found some books though, and some games. Can
we go to the park now?"

But the snow is starting again as
they step outside. The playground, meager as it is, will have to wait. As Alan
ushers Todd back toward the truck, he notices one of the sycamores—the one with
the most blue moss—drooping toward the ground. After shutting Todd in the
truck, he approaches the tree to get a better look.

The moss has obviously been here a
long time. It's less fuzzy than he's ever seen it, more like a fine coating of
dust. The sycamore's slouching trunk is almost completely stained with it.

When Alan uses a long stick to
poke the trunk, the bark offers all the resistance of a bowl of porridge. With
a wet squelch and a stink like rotting grass, the wood gives way and the tree
starts to topple.

Alan jumps out of the way, his
heart pounding, and the dead sycamore crashes through the farmhouse window.
Where the walls are streaked blue, they, too, give out—not with a crash, but
with the moist sucking sound of a boot pulling out of the mud. The house slumps
toward the road, then halts: a man on his knees, gasping for breath as he dies.

98

"Which Realm is that,
now?" The table is littered with empty candy wrappers and Mountain Dew
cans. Rather than clean it up, they're playing on the floor this time. Alan
nods at the cards on his son's side. "Your fifth?"

"Sixth." The word is a
jumbled mouthful, a chunky assortment of sibilants. Todd flips on to his back
and scoots toward the wall as he waits for Alan's play.

"I'll play a Realm."
Alan slides a card onto the carpet. "No fork. Go ahead."

No fork
means there's no
opportunity for Todd to make a decision on the card Alan just played. It's part
of the lingo they've developed over the last couple weeks. Every game, given
time and a dedicated following, eventually grows a kind of comfortable lexicon
that makes sense only to its players. Now, Chaos Vector has one.

"Devilspar Godling,"
Todd drawls. "No fork." He has scooted his butt several inches up the
wall, and is now playing more-or-less upside down. His hands grope for the
right card, and eventually manage to flip it face-up.

"All right. Don't forget to
draw."

"Oh, yeah." The words
have taken on a nasally tone; Todd's face is slowly turning red. Alan watches
the boy struggle to draw his top card, then draws his own. He's learned better
than to try and get the kid to sit still.

"Ooh." Alan throws down
the card he just drew. "Bam. Divine Ordinance."

Todd snorts a complaint. "Aw,
man. Devour the Godling."

"You sure? It's not a devour.
It's an annihilate."

"What?" He flips back to
his knees and reads the card Alan just played, then shrugs. "All right."
He fakes a scream as he removes his own card from the play area. "
Aaaaaah
! Why would you do that to
meeeeee
?"

"Because you are
ruuuuude
," Alan fake-screams back, "and always
eating my
Reaaaaaaalms
!"

Todd snickers and draws.
"Ah!" he cries in the same tone, and turns over another Devilspar
Godling. "But I have many
frieeeeends
!"

"You little bastard!"

"
Hee-hee-hee
!"
Todd twists onto his back again, grunting as his feet crab-walk back up the
wall.

Alan shakes his head and draws.
The situation is getting dire. He stares at his hand, at the cards in play, at
his son.

"Well?" Todd's shoulders
are bunched up around his neck, his upside-down eyes crawling over the ceiling.
"What are you gonna do?"

Alan clears his throat
dramatically. "I'm gonna blast your
ass
," he declares as
Todd's eyes widen, "to kingdom come!" He throws down a card named
Godbomb
.

"
What?
" Todd
shouts, but then goes on: "The
fuck?
"

Silence strikes like lightning.
Todd's face goes long and pensive, his eyes glued to his father's face.

"What the fuck?" Alan
returns. "Did you just say, 'What the fuck?'" And he pounces on his
son, and tickles him until neither of them can breathe.

99

A nameless nightmare wakes him.
His eyes slide open to the brilliant light of the living room, and the darkness
beyond the windows.

It's been weeks since he last saw
the blue star, when it already loomed so large that he thought it might crush
them that night. He needs to see it again. He needs to
know.

He leaves a quick note—
I'm just
outside. Be right back.
—and steps into the cold.

Without a flashlight the darkness
is so total, so suffocating, that he almost goes back in immediately. The RV,
that place of heat and light and comfort, is just a speck against the awesome
blackness of the sky.

No Blurs,
he realizes.
What
happened to the Blurs?
In darkness this complete, they should be
everywhere.

The question doesn't give him
courage, but curiosity is enough. He puts a hand to the side of the RV just to remind
himself it's there. Then, thinking maybe the vehicle is blocking his view of
the sky, he skirts around it.

No luck. On the other side, the
clouds still obscure the stars. He turns back, unsure if he's more relieved or
disappointed.

Then, as if heralding the arrival
of a god to its temple, the snow ignites with ghostly blue. The air starts to
hum, like a plucked violin string. Alan's eyes are drawn upwards, not of his
own will, but not against it either; it's more the way an ant might look up, in
the instant a foot darkens the sky.

The blue star hangs in the gap
between the clouds, fat and ripe, bigger than a harvest moon. He remembers
hearing about comets that looked like rubber ducks and asteroids pocked with
craters like the surface of the moon. This is nothing like that. Its surface is
pitted, but too smooth to be rock. And the gash across its middle has
thickened, spraying blue light into the atmosphere like a rabid dog's slaver.

He is assailed with a primal need
to worship, to beg; he leans against the RV, struggling not to sink to his
knees. The vibration in the air quickens, becoming a steady thrum. As if the
thing's gravity is too great to be ignored, the hair on his head drifts upward.
He feels lighter, like he's on the moon. Nausea thrashes in his stomach.

The clouds drift together again,
slowly. Wisps and strings drape the star, obscuring it but not hiding it
completely.

That is death,
he realizes,
rearing behind the clouds.
It's nearly here. Their story—the one that
started when everyone vanished—will not end well. But then, does any story
actually end well? Even the happy endings are just early ones. They never show
the part where the characters die and turn to worm food.

We are going to die
.

He feels an instant of paralyzing terror.
His heart screams in his chest.

—and leaves a sense of calm, as
powerful as a freefall.

Of course they're going to die.
They were always going to die. He's always known it; every human being on Earth
has always known it. He has spent his entire life running from it, denying it,
craving it. Now that it's here—

The star glares down from the
heavens, a towering prophecy of annihilation.

Now that it's here...

He turns his back to the sky, and
goes inside.

100

Morning dawns warm. The snow is
melting.

"Go outside while I make
breakfast," Alan says.

"Why?"

"Just... do it. You were
literally climbing the walls last night. It's nice out, for some reason. Just
five minutes."

"But what am I gonna
do?"

Alan takes his hand, leads him
outside, and points to the end of the parking lot. "Run."

Todd has never been able to resist
this command before, and he can't resist it today. He takes off through the
slush of melting snow, legs pumping awkwardly. He's no athlete—he's Alan's
son—but he still loves to run; Alan sees it in the surprised grin he gives just
before he takes off, and the abandon in his flailing arms.

"Is it spring?" he asks
when he comes back inside, color bright in his forehead and his healing cheeks.

"No. Indian summer, I think.
Might last a couple days."

"'Indian summer'?"