Endgame: The Calling

by James Frey

  He doesn’t even recognize her voice.

  Who loseth to God as man to man

  Shall win at the turn of the game.

  I have drawn my blade where the lightnings meet

  But the ending is the same:

  Who loseth to God as the sword blades lose

  Shall win at the end of the game.

  ALICE ULAPALA

  Fashion European Wig Factory Warehouse, Chengdu, China

  Alice peers through the greasy, clouded windows. She sees Shari, slumped in her chair, bloody, beaten. One hand is professionally bandaged. It appears to be missing a finger. The fingers around the bloody stump are free, though probably very sore. She’s asleep. How she manages to sleep with that unholy cacophony blaring through the room is unimaginable to Alice.

  Maybe she is unconscious from the beating or dehydration or simple exhaustion. Or maybe all of them.

  Or maybe she’s already dead.

  Alice closes her eyes and listens. Projects her thoughts into the room. Attends to her breath. Calls on the Mothers and the Fathers and the Brothers and the Sisters and all the lines of Earth for help.

  She listens, listens, listens.

  Shari is asleep. Dreaming pleasant things. Green things. Laughing things. All the torture that she has endured is like water in a rainstorm—gone. Washed away. It’s as if she doesn’t feel any of what Baitsakhan and his band of torturers did to her. As if her mind can separate itself from her body. And it’s this that also allows Alice to find the Harrapan. Using a long-forgotten gift.

  Alice’s people have been projecting like this for tens upon tens of thousands of years. They are the only ones left who know how to do it. The only ones but for beings like kepler 22b who came to them in the Great Wide Open in the time before time and taught them.

  Ever since Alice witnessed Shari’s selfless act on the bus, Alice saw the goodness, and the goodness burned bright in the night. She could feel Shari’s pain, and where it was, and when it was. Such goodness does not deserve so much pain. So Alice came to relieve her of it.

  Alice figures that if she does not win Endgame, she would like Shari to win, and either way, Shari sure as shit shouldn’t end up dying at the hands of this Baitsa-whatever dickhead.

  Yes, Shari would be a good goddess to the future of man. An excellent goddess.

  Alice sings Shari a message, a message that lilts into the Harrapan’s dreams: “Three minutes and away . . . three minutes and away . . . three minutes and away . . .”

  Shari’s head lolls.

  Shari has heard it.

  Alice is barefoot, creeps toward the sliding bay door. Through the course of her training she has walked silently over burning coals and beds of broken glass and pads of dried thistle burrs. She has two of her many boomerangs in her hands and a buck knife at her belt. Two kinds of boomerangs for two different purposes. She knows the boomerang is like a bad joke for a Koori, but if you’re good with one, there is no better weapon.

  And no one is better with a boomerang than Alice Ulapala.

  The screaming is so bloody loud, it makes opening the door and walking into the filtered darkness a cinch. One of the boys wearing headphones is cleaning a pistol. He is washed in light from an overhead bulb. The other is in a shadow, texting or playing a game on his phone.

  A longbow is on the table next to a pair of briefcases. A quiver full of arrows.

  “Oi!” Alice yells as a test. They don’t move. It is too loud, and the headphones block the rest out.

  But Shari hears.

  She lifts her swollen head.

  Alice steps out of the shadow.

  Shari sees her.

  Alice winks. She wants the Harrapan to see this, figures she might enjoy what’s about to happen.

  She raises the first boomerang and whips it through the air with a twist. It flies up into the rafters, over a support beam, and down, threading between the cords of hanging lights. The center of the boomerang hits the texting boy hard on the hand. It breaks and the phone shatters. The wing of the boomerang slices across his face and cuts his lips clean off.

  The boomerang hits the floor and slides to a stop a few feet away from Alice.

  He screams out, but the other boy, his back to this one, his headphones on, doesn’t hear him and continues cleaning the gun. The boy’s scream is like a drop of noise falling into the ocean of screams coming from the speakers.

  The lipless one, totally unaware of what has hit him, looks away from Alice, since the attack came from the other direction. Nothing there. He looks to Shari. Nothing there either. Just the girl, bound to her wooden chair, in and out of sleep.

  And then, before he knows it, Alice’s buck knife is in his back, between his C7 and his T1.

  Game over, mate.

  And the other still doesn’t notice.

  Alice makes a twisted face at Shari. Shari understands. The Koori is saying, Who are these amateurs?

  Shari points her eyes at the ropes around her ankles. Alice slides over and cuts them. Shari looks at Bold, the remaining boy.

  He has finally seen what is going on and is putting the last part of the pistol back together. The slide snaps back.

  Shari stands and jumps back down hard on the chair and it splinters into pieces. She has to work herself free of the loosening ropes.

  Alice flings the other boomerang into the air and it misses Bold wide. Alice turns and runs across the room, toward the dark, to try to draw his attention.

  He doesn’t bite.

  Bold fixes the slide, charges a round, and aims at Shari.

  But the Harrapan is free and moving toward him, holding a jagged stick in each hand. Remnants of the chair.

  He pulls the trigger.

  And just then the boomerang hits the back of his neck, and rings around it, and severs everything but the bone of the spine.

  The gun goes off with a pop. The blood-spewing Bold has lost his aim. Shari is not hit, still charging. The boomerang slips to the floor, coated with red. Shari reaches him and drives the stakes hard into his chest. He’s already dead, but she does it anyway. Bold falls back onto the table, his body quaking like a crucified frog pinned to a dissecting board.

  Alice emerges from the shadows.

  “You all right, mate?” she asks, reaching out and hitting stop on the iPod. Silence fills the room.

  Shari is breathless and feral.

  She nods.

  “Great, then,” Alice says, as if they’ve just finished playing a friendly game. Alice bends and picks up the boomerang.

  “Two guns in that case,” Shari says, as if she is offering them.

  “Don’t like guns,” Alice says. She grabs a rag from the table and cleans off her weapons.

  Shari pries a pistol from Bold’s hand and takes the other from the table. “Neither do I, but I’m still taking these. It’s just the start of what I’m owed.”

  “All right, then. Why not?” Alice opens the other case and takes the two Sigs, along with the extra magazines. “We should scoot, yeah?”

  “Yes, honorable Koori, we should,” Shari says.

  They start to walk out. Shari is not tired anymore. Her hand will need attention, but it doesn’t hurt. Her first murder, plus the lift that Alice has brought into her heart with her generous violence, have her amped.

  They reach the door and peer out. The coast is clear.

  “How did you find me?” Shari wonders.

  Alice snickers. “Ah, ancient secret. Have to kill you if I told you.”

  “Well, I’m happy you did. Thank you.”

  “Yeah. Pity that other little bugger wasn’t here. Woulda liked to strike him from the board.”

  “I agree.”

  “Eh, he’ll get his turn, I’m sure.”

  “I plan to see to it personally, Alice Ulapala.”

  Alice gives Shari another wink. “My name sounds real nice when you say it.” She looks left. “I’ll be going my way now, if you don’t mind. This isn’t a peace party or
nothing. I don’t aim to team up. You’re just right by me is all, and deserved better than that lot.”

  Shari nods gravely. “I’ll never forget it. I hope to return the favor someday, if the circumstances are right.”

  “Circumstances,” Alice says, looking to the sky, where a few faint stars flicker here and there. “They could get funny pretty soon, couldn’t they?”

  “They already have, if you ask me,” Shari says with a painful smile.

  “Well, I’ll cut yer head right off if you’n me are the last ones standing. But it’ll be with a heavy heart.”

  Shari smiles, holds out her good hand. “The same goes for me.”

  Alice takes it and they shake. “Give yer Little Alice a peck when you see her. Special delivery from her big auntie A.” She turns and trots away, her bare feet noiselessly slapping the ground.

  Shari watches her for a moment.

  Alice is a marvel.

  A hero already.

  But Shari can’t stay. She runs across the road and climbs an iron ladder and moves up to the warehouse roof and crosses the night of Chengdu in secrecy.

  She is leaving Baitsakhan—and China—behind.

  She wants his blood.

  But she must be patient.

  So, so patient.

  CHIYOKO TAKEDA

  Liu Residence, Unregistered Belowground Property, Tongyuanzhen, Gaoling County, Xi’an, China

  Chiyoko is lying next to An Liu. Their bare legs are entwined. They are facing each other. A sheet is pulled to their waists.

  This is what she had to do to escape.

  Now he trusts her.

  Soon he will sleep.

  And when he does, she will leave.

  Only something more has happened.

  Chiyoko rests a hand in the crook of his hip. He draws a finger over her shoulder in small spirals. He was gentle, patient, preternaturally adept. He whispered questions that she could answer with only a look or a nod. He pinched her once, at just the right time. He tickled her, and she laughed silently. He moved slowly, and deeply, slowly and deeply.

  And most importantly, aside from his questions, he was silent.

  Like her.

  Respectful.

  Right through to the end.

  Because of all this, though she is pained to admit it, she liked it.

  She liked lying with the mad bomber of the 377th.

  She likes thinking that she had changed him in some significant way.

  It was not her first time (the others were clumsy and disappointing), but she assumes it must have been the first time for An. Who would have sex with this twisted, ticking monster otherwise? He could have paid for it, she supposes, but even then he wouldn’t have learned all that had just happened. A prostitute would only have taught him what anyone can find on the internet in a matter of seconds.

  No, the only explanation was that it was her. The effect Chiyoko had on him. Even if it was only for the time it took, he loved her. And although she had no intention of loving him back, for those few moments when their bodies shook in unison, a small part of her loved him too.

  This is her Endgame now. Playing pretend, but not entirely. Something real has happened here.

  He showed her around the place. At first he was reserved and guarded, but then she laced her fingers into his, and he began to thaw, open up.

  He showed her his computers. His machines. His materials. His explosives. His artifacts. His tools. He even showed her his medications, lined up in neat white plastic bottles in his bathroom. He showed her a pet: a lizard from the western provinces. He showed her a picture of his mother, who died when he was only one. He did not show her a picture of anyone else.

  He made them dinner. Fried rice with oysters and homegrown garlic shoots and pork dumplings and orange slices. They ate, and drank cold Cokes with lemon wedges. Ice cream and cookies for dessert.

  At dinner the only thing he asked was if everything was all right, though he asked this 17 times.

  Everything was all right.

  Eventually they went to his room. She saw her stuff in a little pile. It was all there. She did not rush to it. The stuff could wait. It had to.

  Because first it had to happen.

  It was the only way.

  They sat on the bed in silence, keeping a small distance between them. Being. Breathing. Not touching. He put a hand on the bed and she put her hand on top of his and turned to him. He was so nervous he couldn’t look. She kissed him on the neck. He turned his mouth to hers.

  And it began.

  And it happened.

  Now they are looking at each other. Unsmiling. Just looking. Chiyoko feels desperate. She still has to leave. But, strangely, right now she doesn’t want to.

  She blinks her big eyes and holds up a finger and gets out of bed. He watches her naked body glide to the chair with her things. She gets her phone. She returns. She is completely at ease in her skin.

  He’s envious of her. Of her ease and purity. Envious and enamored.

  She gets back in bed and opens a Chinese language notepad app. Types. Shows it to him.

  That was nice. Really nice.

  “It was. Thank you.” An sounds a little surprised, but also tries to be confident and assured. The lack of a stutter certainly helps in that department.

  I wonder if any of the others . . .

  “Ha. Maybe. Probably those two you were following, right?”

  Chiyoko shrugs. It’s not like her to gossip. She doesn’t care what the Cahokian and the Olmec might be doing. She just wants to draw An out some more. It’s working.

  He stares at her, speaks. “I want to tell you something. Some things. That I’ve never told anyone. Is that all right?”

  He is being dumb, she can’t help but think. Never has she been so glad to be a mute as in this moment.

  She nods.

  The whole time he speaks, he looks directly into her eyes. His voice is even and deliberate. His nerves are quiet, his tics still.

  “When I was very young, I was normal. Two, three years old. I can remember it. Actually I can remember it very well. Playing with red rubber balls in the park, talking to my uncles, insisting on getting a little toy, running, laughing, talking without a stutter. None of what I am now—what I am when I’m away from you—was there. None of it. And then, when I turned four, I was told about Endgame.”

  She pushes her head into the pillow. Chiyoko knew about Endgame from the day of her birth. The stories they told her as a baby were of Endgame. The songs they sang to put her to bed, the easy lies her parents told to get her to behave. Everything was Endgame, all the time. It troubled her, of course, and as she got older her apprehension grew, but she always accepted it. It was a part of her, and in a very real way, she was proud of who she was.

  But not An.

  “The day after I turned four, my father whipped me savagely with a switch for no reason. I cried, wailed, pleaded. It didn’t matter; he didn’t stop. And everything that came after was a nightmare. I was beaten, tortured, forced to learn by rote. If I cried, I was tormented more. I was made to do hundreds of repetitive tasks or movements thousands upon thousands of times. Left alone in a box only centimeters bigger than me for days at a time. Starved. Parched. Drowned. Overloaded. Eventually I learned not to cry. Not to scream or protest. I had to understand the hardness of it all. And I did. They broke me over and over and over again. They beat me regularly. They said it was the same way with them, and before them, and so it would be with me, and after me. When I was ten, they beat me so bad they fractured my skull and I had to have a steel plate put in my forehead. I was in a coma for two weeks. They didn’t care that I developed tics and spoke with a stutter when I came out of the coma, that half my skull is made of metal. As they made me—my own father and his brothers, and no women, none—they forgot the innocent boy that I started as. They forgot the little kid I once was. I, however, never have. And I never forgave them for what they did to me.”

  Chiyoko can�
��t help but feel for him, moves closer to him.

  “I killed them all when I was eleven. Drugged them while they were sleeping and doused them with the cheap rice whiskey they loved so much and lit them each on fire, one by one. The flames roused them, even with the drugs. They were terrified, and I loved it. I left my uncles to burn alone, but I watched my father. I said to them, in my mind, because my tongue was so jammed by speech, ‘You have reaped what you have sown.’ I watched my burning father for as long as I could, until I had to leave the house, because it was burning too. That day was, and has been until today, the happiest day of my entire life.”

  Chiyoko puts a hand on his arm. He is silent. The silence is the purest Chiyoko has ever heard.

  “I hate Endgame, Chiyoko. Despise it. Loathe it. If humanity is meant to perish, then it should perish. No one will have a chance to win as long as I live.” Pause. “No one, but now, you.”

  And I have to leave you to make that happen, she thinks. I hope you will understand.

  The silence resumes. She leans in and kisses him. Kisses him again. And again. She pulls back. They stare at each other. They still don’t speak.

  He rolls onto his back and gazes at the ceiling. “The others are going to find it difficult to get around very soon. They will all be put on no-fly lists, along with as many aliases as I could glean. If I find more, I will add those names too. The only people who will find it easy to fly will be you and me. Oh—and the young one, Baitsakhan. I just couldn’t locate any electronic bread crumbs for that one. It’s like he’s never used the internet, or left Mongolia until a week ago.”

  He isn’t dumb at all. He is in love. And whatever his goal, he is Playing. Playing harder than most, if not all, of the others.

  I am lucky.

  She nuzzles her head into his neck. She thumbs something into her phone. Shows it to him.

  Thank you, An. Thank you for everything. I’m going to sleep now if that’s okay.

  “Of course. I’m tired too.” Pause. “Will you stay here, in the bed with me?”