by James Frey
Christopher shakes his head. “This is crazy. Like, Jesus-riding-a-dinosaur crazy.”
“No, it isn’t. It makes sense if you think about it.”
“How?”
“It all happened so long ago that every culture adapted the story to fit their experience. But the core of it—that life came from above, that humanity was created by gods—that’s true.”
Christopher stares at her.
“Sky People. You mean like . . .” He shakes his head. “This is insane. What you’re saying can’t be real. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard! And you’re crazy if you go.”
“I’m sorry, Christopher. If I were in your shoes I’d probably react the same way. Actually, probably way worse. You know me as Sarah Alopay, your girlfriend, but I’m also someone else, and even though Tate was supposed to be playing, I always have been someone else as well. I was raised, as were 300 generations of my people, to be a Player. Everything that just happened—the meteor, the piece that we found, my necklace becoming part of it, the message and the code—it was all exactly as foretold in our legends.”
Sarah studies him, waiting for a reaction. Christopher’s face has gone completely serious; he’s no longer trying to talk her out of Endgame, as if that tactic ever had a chance.
“Why now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did it have to start now?”
“I’ll probably be asking myself that question until I die, Christopher. I don’t know the answer. I know what the legend says, but I don’t know Their real reasons.”
“What does the legend say?”
“It says Endgame will begin if the human race has shown that it doesn’t deserve to be human. That it has wasted the enlightenment They gave to us. The legend also says that if we take Earth for granted, if we become too populous and strain this blessed planet, then Endgame will begin. It will begin in order to bring an end to what we are and restore order to Earth. Whatever the reason, what will be will be.”
“Fucking Christ.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you win?” he asks in a low voice.
“No one knows. That’s what I’m going to find out.”
“In China.”
“Yeah.”
“And it’s going to be dangerous?”
“Yes.”
“You talked about choice in your speech—choose not to do it.”
Sarah shakes her head. “No. It’s what my parents were born to do, what my brother was born to do, what I was born to do. It is the responsibility of my people, and it has been since we appeared on this planet, and my choice is to do it.”
Christopher has no words. He doesn’t want her to leave. Doesn’t want her to be in danger. Sarah is his girlfriend. His best friend. His partner in crime, the last person he thinks of before he falls asleep and the first person he thinks of when he wakes. She’s the girl of his dreams, only she’s real. The thought of someone trying to hurt her, it ties his stomach in knots. The idea that he’ll be thousands of miles away when it happens makes it even worse.
“The stakes are dire, Christopher. You probably won’t ever see me again. Mom and Dad, Omaha, Tate—I’m looking back on all of it already. I love you, I love you with everything in me, but we may never see each other again.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I may not come back.”
“Why?”
“If I don’t win, I’ll die.”
“Die?”
“I will fight to stay alive, I promise I will. But yes. It could happen. Easily. Don’t forget that I’m a backup. Tate was supposed to be here, not me. The other Players, they’ve probably been training since before they could walk.”
They stare at each other. The sounds of the airport—the announcements of gate changes, the whispering wheels of rolling luggage, the squeaks of sneakers on polished granite floors—swirl around them.
“I’m not gonna let you die,” Christopher says. “And if you have to win to stay alive, then I am coming with you. I don’t give a shit about the rules.”
Her heart drops to the floor. She knew saying good-bye wasn’t going to be easy, but she didn’t expect this. And in a way it makes her love him more. Kind, generous, strong, beautiful Christopher.
She shakes her head. “The Players have to go to the Calling alone, Christopher.”
“Too bad for the others, then. Because I’m coming with you.”
“Listen,” she says, changing her tone. “You need to stop thinking of me as your girlfriend. Even if you could come, I wouldn’t let you. I don’t need your protection. And, honestly, you aren’t up for it.”
So much for finding a quiet gate where they can make out. Sarah knew it could come to this, that she might have to be harsh with him. She sees that her words hurt him, that his pride is wounded. She’s sorry about that, but what she said is the truth.
Christopher shakes his head, persisting. “I don’t care. I’m coming.”
Sarah sighs. “I’m gonna stand up in a minute. If you try to follow me, they’ll stop you.” Sarah tilts her head toward her parents.
“They can’t stop me.”
“You have no idea what they can do. The three of us, we could kill everyone in this terminal quickly and easily and escape, no problem.”
Christopher snorts in disbelief. “Christ, Sarah. You wouldn’t do that.”
“Understand me, Christopher,” Sarah says, leaning forward and gritting her teeth. “I will do whatever it takes to win. If I want you, my parents, everyone we know to survive, I have to do whatever it takes.”
Christopher is silent. He glances at the Alopays, who are staring back at him. Simon is giving him a hard, cold look. It’s unlike anything he’s ever seen before. Christopher thought he knew these people. He was closer to them than his own family, and now . . .
Sarah sees Christopher’s face change, notices the fear blossoming there, and worries that she’s pushed too hard. She softens her tone. “If you want to help me, stay here and help the people who need it. Help my parents deal with Tate’s death, and maybe mine. If I win, I’ll come back and find you, and we can live the rest of our lives together. I promise.”
Christopher looks deep into Sarah’s eyes. His voice shakes. “I love you, Sarah Alopay.” She tries to smile but fails. “I love you,” he repeats earnestly. “And I swear that I’ll never, ever stop loving you.”
They stand at the same time and wrap their arms around each other. They kiss, and though they have shared many, many kisses, none of them has meant as much, or felt as strong. Like all such kisses it doesn’t last long enough.
They pull apart. Sarah knows that this is probably the last time she will ever see him, speak to him, touch him.
“I love you too, Christopher Vanderkamp. I love you too.”
30.3286, 35.4419xliv
AN LIU
Liu Residence, Unregistered Belowground Property, Tongyuanzhen, Gaoling County, Xi’an, China
An Liu has a disadvantage, and he is ashamed.
Blinkblink.
A tic.
BlinkSHIVER.
SHIVERSHIVER.
But An Liu has advantages too:
1. The Players are coming to Xi’an, China.
2. An Liu lives in Xi’an, China.
BlinkSHIVER.
SHIVERblink.
3. Therefore, he has initial home-court advantage.
4. An is a world-class hacker.
5. An is an expert bomb maker.
BlinkSHIVERblinkblink.
Blinkblink.
BlinkblinkSHIVER.
6. An knows how to find people.
After decoding the message, An continuously hacked passenger manifests at airports close to the other impact zones, filtering results for age, ticket-purchase date, date of visa issuance, and blink-blink-blink assuming there would be a more-or-less even distribution of gender, sex.
SEXSHIVERSEX.
He figures that shiver-blink the Playe
rs near the Mongolian and Australian impact zones, on account of their remoteness, will be tricky, so he abandons them. The Mongolian will be coming overland blink anyway, and the Aussie will also probably start his or her journey blink by jeep or possibly chartered aircraft. Instant dead ends.
He also discounts Addis Ababa, Istanbul, Warsaw, and Forest Hills, New York, on account of these being shiver-shiver-SHIVER rather populous. He concentrates on Juliaca, Omaha, Naha, and Al Ain. These smaller markets make the hacking and filtering easier.
Initial results provide 451 candidates. These are cross-referenced with train and/or plane ticket purchases for transport within China. An blink is blink not blink hopeful.
Blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink.
Had it been necessary for him to travel to reach the Calling, he would have taken the obvious precaution of using aliases, forged visas, and at least two passports, but he knows that not all people are as paranoid as he is. Even Players.
And lo. Shiver. He gets a hit: Sarah Alopay.
SHIVERblinkblink.
Blinkblink.
Blink.
JAGO TLALOC, SARAH ALOPAY
Train T41, Car 8, Passing through Shijiazhuang, China
Depart: Beijing
Arrive: Xi’an
Jago Tlaloc is on an overnight train from Beijing to Xi’an. It has taken him nearly three days to get this far. Juliaca to Lima. Lima to Miami. Miami to Chicago. Chicago to Beijing. 24,122 km. 13,024.838 nautical miles. 79,140,413.56 feet.
And now the train for 11.187 hours.
Longer if it gets delayed.
Endgame doesn’t wait, so he is hoping for no delays.
Jago has a private sleeping cabin, but the mattress is hard and he’s restless. He sits up and crosses his legs, counts his breaths. He stares out the window and thinks of the most beautiful things he has ever seen: a girl falling asleep in the sand as the sun set over a beach in Colombia, streams of moonlight reflecting off the rippling waters of the Amazon, the lines of the Nazca giant on the day he became a Player. His mind won’t calm, though. His breath is not full. Positive visualizations disintegrate under the weight.
He cannot stop thinking about the horror visited on his hometown. The hellfire and the smell of burning plastic and flesh, and the sounds of crying men, burned women, and dying children. The helplessness of the firemen, the army, the politicians. The helplessness of everyone and everything in the face of the violence.
The day after Jago claimed his piece of the meteorite, the sun rose on a huddled mass of people lined up outside his parents’ villa. Some of them had lost everything and hoped his family would be able to restore them. As Jago packed, his parents did what they could. On television, astrophysicists made hollow promises about how an event like this would never happen again.
They’re wrong.
More are coming.
Bigger, more devastating.
More will suffer.
More will burn.
More will die.
The people called the meteor that fell on Juliaca el puño del diablo. The Devil’s Fist. Eleven other fists punched into the earth, killing many, many more.
The meteors fell and now the world is different.
Vulnerable.
Terrified.
Jago knows he should be above such feelings. He has trained to be above such feelings, yet he cannot sleep, cannot relax, cannot calm himself. He swings his legs over the bed and places his bare feet on the thin, cool carpet. He cracks his neck and closes his eyes.
The meteorites were just a preamble.
Todo, todo el tiempo, he thinks. Todo.
He stands. His knees creak. He has to get out of his compartment, move, try to clear his mind. He grabs a pair of green cargo pants and pulls them on. His legs are thin, strong. They’ve done more than 100,000 squats. He sits in the chair and puts on wool socks, leather moccasins. His feet have kicked a heavy bag over 250,000 times. He straps a small tactical knife to his forearm and slips into a long-sleeved plaid shirt. He has done over 15,000 one-handed pull-ups. He grabs his iPod and sticks in a pair of black earbuds. He turns on music. The music is hard, heavy, and loud. Metal. His music and his weapons. Heavy heavy metal.
He steps to the door of his compartment. Before exiting he looks in the full-length mirror. He is tall, thin, and taut, as if made of high-tension wire. His hair is jet-black, short, and messed. His skin is the color of caramel, the color of his people, undiluted for 8,000 years. His eyes are black. His face is pockmarked from a skin infection he had when he was seven, and he has a long, jagged scar that runs from the corner of his left eye, down his cheek, over his jaw, and onto his neck. He got the scar when he was 12, in a knife fight. It was with another kid a little older than him. Jago got the scar, but he took the kid’s life. Jago is ugly and menacing. He knows that people fear him because of the way he looks, which generally amuses him. They should fear him for what he knows. What he can do. What he has done.
He opens the door, steps into the hall, walks. The music blares in his ears, hard, heavy, and loud, drowning out the steely screech of the wheels on the rails.
He steps into the dining car. Five people are seated at three tables: two Chinese businessmen sitting alone, one asleep in his booth, his head on the table, the other drinking tea and staring at his laptop; a Chinese couple speaking quietly and intensely; a girl with long, auburn hair woven into a braid, her back to him.
Jago buys a bag of peanuts and a Coke and walks toward an empty table across from the girl with the auburn hair. She is not Chinese. She is reading the latest edition of China Daily. The page is covered in color photos of devastation from the crater in Xi’an. The crater where the Small Wild Goose Pagoda had stood. He sits down. She’s five feet away from him, engrossed in the paper; she does not look up.
He removes the peanuts from their shells, pops them into his mouth, sips the Coke. He stares at her. She’s pretty, looks like an American tourist, a medium-sized backpack next to her. He has seen countless girls like her stop in Juliaca on their way to Lake Titicaca.
“It’s not polite to stare,” she says, looking at the paper.
“I didn’t think you’d noticed,” he replies in accented English.
“I did.” She still hasn’t looked at him.
“Can I join you? I haven’t spoken to many people the past few days, and this country can be bien loco, you know?”
“Tell me about it,” she says, looking up, her eyes drilling into him. She’s easily the most beautiful American, and maybe woman, he’s ever seen. “Come on over.”
He half rises and sidles into the booth opposite her. “Peanut?”
“No thanks.”
“Smart.”
“Hm?”
“Not to accept food from a stranger.”
“Were you going to poison me?”
“Maybe.”
She smiles and seems to reconsider, like he’s challenged her to a dare. “What the hell, I’ll take my chances.”
Her smile crushes him. He is usually the one who has to charm a woman, which he has done dozens of times, but this one is charming him. He holds out the bag and she takes a handful of the peanuts, spreads them on the table in front of her.
“How long you been here?” she asks.
“On the train?”
“No. In China.”
“Little over three weeks,” he says, lying.
“Yeah? Me too. About three weeks.” His training has taught him how to tell if someone is lying, and she is. Interesting. He wonders if she could be one of them.
“Where you from?” he asks.
“America.”
“No kidding. Where in America?”
“Omaha.” She’s not lying this time. “You?”
“Peru, near Lake Titicaca.” So he won’t lie either.
She raises her eyebrows and smirks. “I never thought that was a real place until these. . . .” She points at the paper.
“T
he meteors.”
“Yeah.” She nods. “It’s a funny name. Lake Titty Caca.” She pronounces the words individually, like all amused English speakers do. “You couldn’t come up with anything better than that?”
“Depending on who you ask, it either means Stone of the Puma or Crag of Lead, and it’s considered by many to be a mystical, powerful place. Americans seem to think UFOs visit it and aliens created it.”
“Imagine that,” she says, smiling. “Omaha’s not mystical at all. Most people think it’s kind of boring, actually. We got good steak, though. And Warren Buffet.”
Jago chuckles. He assumes that’s a joke. He doesn’t know who Warren Buffet is, but he has a fat, dumb American name.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” She cracks another peanut.
“What?”
“I’m from Omaha, you’re from near Lake Titicaca, and we’re on a train to Xi’an. The meteors hit in each place.”
“Yes, that is weird.”
“What’s your name?”
“Feo.” He pops a peanut in his mouth.
“Nice to meet you, Feo. I’m Sarah.” She pops a peanut in her mouth. “Tell me—you going to Xi’an to see the crater?”
“Me? No. Just touring. I can’t imagine the Chinese government is going to be letting anyone get too close to it anyway.”
“Can I ask you another question, Feo?”
“Sure.”
“You like to play games?”
She’s outed herself. He’s not sure this is wise. His response will go a long way to determine whether or not he will be outed too.
“Not really,” he answers quickly. “I like puzzles, though.”
She leans back. Her tone changes, the flirtatious lilt melting away. “Not me. I like knowing things for sure one way or the other. I hate uncertainty. I tend to eliminate it as quickly as I can, get it out of my life.”
“Probably a good policy, if you can actually do it.”
She smiles, and though he should be tense and ready to kill her, her smile disarms him. “So—Feo. That mean something?”
“It means ‘ugly.’”
“Your parents name you that?”
“My real name is Jago; everyone just calls me Feo.”