But: “People will hurt people”? “On the way to the Safe Zone, you’ll encounter lunatics who have no interest in helping you”? Those were a couple that must’ve slipped the Game Master’s mind.
“What happened? Do you wanna go to those people?” Patrick said.
“Shh a sec . . .”
“Yeahbutwhathapp—”
Patrick, shut up! I’m trying to think; just shut up!
Michael whipped around to look at Patrick—and Patrick did more than just recoil at Michael’s anger. Michael saw something in Patrick’s eyes: that going-far-away look. OhGodno. He’d seen that look before when Patrick got too confused or scared . . . and he’d seen what happened to Patrick if nobody stopped it.
Michael snapped back into himself.
Whoever these freaking people are, don’t let Patrick know that you’re scared.
Michael licked his lips. “They’re just some bad guys,” he told Patrick. “It’s a surprise.”
“Huh?” said Patrick. “Another one? Like the woods?”
“Bigger one. Way, way bigger.”
“Did the Game Master tell you about it?” Patrick asked.
No, Bub. This, he definitely did not mention. I’m starting to think the Game Master is kinda full of shit.
Michael said, “Yeah, of course he told me about it.” He forced a smile. It felt real, almost, even to him.
Michael heard roars.
He twitched, nearly screaming back, then looked out the window. The alley led out onto Main Street. The people from the hideous ceremony stood there: the strange priest was speaking to them, waving his hands down one direction of the street and then another. Beyond the priest and his followers, in the hills that towered just beyond the buildings on the opposite side of the street, lay the edge of the forest. Which was bellowing.
Dusk-colored shadows were approaching from the deeps of the woods. Dozens of Bellows. Because it was almost nightfall.
Twenty-two days plus one day equals you overslept you stupid asshole!
Hurry. Hurry and get out get out get out.
“Piggyback,” Michael whispered.
“Michael?” Patrick whispered in his ear as he clambered onto his back.
And sense-memory overpowered Michael. . . .
It’s Halloween.
Patrick rides piggyback, his hands clasped together just above Michael’s heart. They stand in the hallway to the garage; on their right is the bathroom with the busted toilet. Patrick’s whispered “Michael?” is warm in his ear. Michael cocks his head and puts a finger to his lips.
He presses a hand against the hinges of the door to the garage to stop its double squeak. And once the door is shut behind them, he nods for Patrick to go on.
“How do you know about The Game?” Patrick whispers.
“Like I said, buddy: the Game Master told me. He told me how we can win.”
Michael goes his rehearsed eight and a half steps across the dark to a mound of old clothes in the corner. A waft of perfume from a ragged scarf. He pushes down his ache. Underneath the clothes lie Michael’s backpack and a duffel bag, both filled with enough food to last through The Game they’ll be playing for the next couple days.
He gives the backpack to Patrick, tells him holding it counts for five points.
“How do you win?” Patrick asks.
“You get points. But they’re not as important. What’s important is that you outrun the bad guys; what’s important is where you get to in the end.”
“Where are we going to?”
Away from here, Bub. This Game is going to take us away, Michael thinks.
And opens the side garage door to the jack-o’-lantern night, not knowing what is about to change, not knowing that The Game and its bad guys will be different than he had anticipated, not knowing that when he goes outside, he will see his neighbor being eaten.
“Michael what’re we gonna do?” Patrick whispered now—not in their garage in Bridgeview, West Virginia, but in a boarded office in good ol’ “Almost Heaven” coal country.
“Stealth Mode,” Michael made himself whisper.
One: get out of here.
Two: fast.
Three: stop thinking, and feel your blood.
One: get out. Two: fast. Three . . .
Hunched, Patrick’s legs tucked under his elbows, Michael moved away from the alley window. He could not concentrate, because his thoughts were flinging through him—
—How did this happen? Why were the people so mad that the Bellow had been killed? Why?
Michael shrugged Patrick higher up, looking around the room for their possessions. Duffel bag? Not important, leave it, no time. Rifle? Rifle? Where is the— There, behind the desk, go.
And how are you going to “go” if your car is outside with all those people?
“But they’re not supposed to be bad,” Patrick said.
“Which is what makes it a surprise.”
Something sharp caught Michael’s pants. Just the side of the desk. But he’d nearly screamed.
Be quiet, Bub. Because Michael had to think—no, no he had to not think—he had to not think and get them out of here, because if he didn’t—
Because: if Patrick gets too scared, if Patrick Freaks again, Atipax pills won’t be enough, will they, Mikey?
They went to the front door.
As Michael looked through a half-boarded window beside the door, the priest was finishing his talk. The snow had a strange muffling effect on the wild man’s words, but every few traveled: “boot prints . . . small . . . chosen . . . find . . .” Their shadows growing darker in the bluish snow, the priest led the group out of sight, back into the church.
Michael and Patrick hadn’t found any weapons in their canvass of Coalmount. Evidently, that was because they hadn’t thought of the church as a possible arsenal.
The congregation reemerged with two axes, three pipes, four crowbars, and seven pistols. The priest himself cradled a rifle with a scope and banana clip.
He motioned in different directions, and the people began spreading into the streets and side streets and alleys, like a great spiderweb being spun. Looking for us. Oh God, yeah, it’s a search party, just not the kind I wanted.
One woman was waiting in the road. A hammy woman—red coat, no gloves, a sweet, dimpled face—paced parallel to the coal office, not fifty feet from the front door. She was carrying a crowbar. She raised a hand to her brow, scouting the tree line that rose behind the buildings on the opposite side of the street. Amazingly, she seemed to have no interest at all in the side of the street where Michael was hidden.
And she had not even noticed their Volvo station wagon.
Situated between Michael and the woman—dusted with fresh inches of snow from last night’s storm—was the only possible hope of escape for the people she was stalking.
God bless you, crappy West Virginia winter! “Gamer, we’ve got to sneak out. I bet you’ll do it awesome, huh?”
“H-heck yeah,” Patrick said weakly. And added with a struggle: “woot.”
God, he tried so hard. Ya-ya.
Michael thought: Breathe. Just breathe.
Here, Michael thought, we go.
And did.
In the milli-moment when Hammy was turning and turning away, Michael, carrying his rifle and his brother both, opened the door of the office of Southern West Virginia Coal and Natural Gas, and silently stepped out.
Because he did not want the steam to rise, he locked his breath inside his mouth.
And in his temples, he felt his thudding blood.
In seconds like these—strings of seconds that seemed sewn together, tethered easily with light—everything glowed. Everything flowed. His feet floated down before him, instructing themselves, finding seamlessly the empty space between the iced-over parts of snow that would crunch. He was not thinking. In seconds like these, he was pure doing.
He could smell the snow. He tasted and heard the cold. The car was sliding closer to him, and
as it did, behind his eyes, he saw them driving off in it.
“Michael!” Patrick whispered uncertainly.
Michael flinched, ready to hiss at Patrick, but then everything inside him froze.
On the other side of the Volvo, Hammy was turning toward them.
Run! But Michael ignored the panic. He threw himself down, Patrick still on his back. His shoulder bucked against the side-rear bumper of the Volvo; snow from the bike attached to the back fell down on them.
He could see the woman’s feet, under the car. Her fat legs were stomping in the snow.
His own legs burned and quivered underneath him.
The office was only maybe ten paces back, but it might as well have been in another world. He’d be spotted if he tried to return.
Patrick looked panicked, and Michael understood that he had to hurry.
He crouched-crawled to the front passenger door. His hand gripped the handle, and just as he tugged it, he thought:
Locked it. I locked it before we went in the office.
The Volvo’s alarm exploded the air around him. Michael’s legs softened. Bright spots of shock popped in front of his eyes. He jammed his gloves into his mouth.
Patrick screamed into the glow of now-flashing hazard lights.
“Heeere!” Hammy shrieked. “Oooooooh, they’re heeeeeeere!”
She began to run, but slid and stumbled as she made the transition from sidewalk to road, slamming onto a knee. “Waahh-hoooo!” she wailed. Beyond her, in all directions, shadows neared: Bellows in the woods, killers in the roads, wailing and approaching.
Patrick, his eyes white and afraid, said, “Michael?”
NOW! FEEL YOUR—
—blood, blood, hammering his heart—
And suddenly, suddenly Michael was calm!
He took Patrick’s hand into his own, knowing this: he would get the keys, or it would be Game Over.
He got Patrick up, back across the sidewalk toward the office, shouldered the door, into darkness, where he tripped over a can of paint, quickly regained footing—to the desk, to their duffel bag beside it—kicking the paint can away and as the can burst open and splashed red color, Michael tore open the bag and fanned apart the Pop-Tart wrappers and there were his keys, there were his keys, winking, like they were happy to see him too.
“Michael, what are we gonna do?”
“Go to the next level.”
Grabbing Patrick’s hand again, squirming bones in mitten, yes-yes, and out the window, quite calmly Michael saw shadows that were confused and shouting. The people were twenty yards away, and jogging fast. But, ah, Gamers, that was the thing: they were jogging, and Michael—beginning to smile—Michael was dashing.
The car key went into the car lock like warmed oil.
In video games, in the cut scenes at the ends of missions, it was always this moment that snagged the good guys by the ankle. In video games, it didn’t matter how perfectly you played: you couldn’t go to the next level if the game didn’t want you to. Bad guys could be gaining, and you do something stupid, like drop your key—but Michael’s car door opened perfectly. He lifted Bub into the car, and Michael was about to enter the car, too, to put the insane pursuers in his past. So he did not expect it when there came a flash of yellow, and the Volvo’s windshield finally shattered inward. And beside Michael’s ear, just as he was getting ready to sit, the headrest exploded.
Stuffing flew, white and singed.
Snow wheeled into the car through the place where the windshield had been. Ducked down, stunned, his head on the driver’s seat but his knees on the ground outside the open driver’s door, it took Michael several seconds to fully process what had happened. His brain had been knocked, reeling, to the mat. And the yes-yes was gone.
“Patrick?” he made himself not scream.
Silence.
“Owwww,” said a voice.
His heart iced. “What, what’s wrong?”
“That was so loud.”
“I . . . I know. What a jerk, right?” Michael said. He tried to sound calm—didn’t think he was a success.
Don’t Freak, please. Not now, Bub.
Michael spotted the keys. They’d fallen onto the passenger seat. They were just out of reach—
A second shot exploded the remainder of the headrest.
A metallic click, in front of the car. “Come to me, boy.”
Michael cautiously raised his head, peering over the dashboard. The gunman-priest stood ten feet from the hood, his long barrel aimed at Michael. He ejected his spent shell, which disappeared in the snow, steaming.
He slid the cocking mechanism of his gun forward, chambering a new round. He’s actually going to shoot us.
“Sir, wait, WAIT!”
Wind spun snow between them. The man didn’t say a thing. But his eyes were happy and glittered in his face like beetles.
“Out, boy.” His whisper carried as well as a boom. “If you know what will please your soul: out.”
Not far from the forest’s edge, Bellows blew their dead calls. The last of the search party—mostly older people who couldn’t run as fast—were arriving from the side streets. They began forming a loose ring around the car.
Run, you die. Stay in the car, you die.
“Out.” The wild priest smiled.
“Me and my brother?” asked Michael.
“The child shall be last, thankee.”
What could Michael do but nod?
He pretended to struggle to get to his feet to buy himself half a second. “Bub,” he whispered.
“H-huh?”
I’m going to go outside now, Michael thought, to talk with the man with the gun. Don’t Freak. Please stay here. And if you hear him shoot, don’t look.
“BRB. You just do one thing for me, okay?
“Don’t eat my Flintstone Vitamins, chump, or I swear I’ll punch your butt so hard . . .”
There wasn’t even a giggle from the backseat. Michael stood. And now, more than any other moment since The Game began, he had no idea what he was going to do.
He stepped away from the car and into the center of the unreal nether-zone Main Street.
The gunman-priest kept his weapon on Michael, ruddy face grinning tightly. His long robes twisted and furled, somehow ghostly. His robe and his fingers were stained red.
Michael raised his hands up. So what I’m gonna do is . . . That was a trick that worked, sometimes: starting a thought and letting it finish itself.
But it didn’t work this time.
His stomach crawled. He was surrounded by the crowd that had happily witnessed murder in the church. He half expected the crowd to swarm him, to carry him to the altar.
The crowd watched.
Michael took a step away from the car and nodded to the gunman-priest, who did not nod back.
“Who are you, boy?”
“My name is Michael Faris, sir,” Michael replied carefully, “and I’m just looking for—”
“‘Michael.’ Do you know who the real Michael is? ‘Michael’ is the archangel: God’s warrior. But Michael Faris, you betray God.” The priest cocked his head. “Where do you come from, Michael Faris?”
“The office. We slept there.”
“Play no games,” the priest said. “Before that, boy.”
“We . . . came from Route 82.” Michael motioned toward the edge of Coalmount with his head.
“Before that,” said the priest.
“Before . . . ?”
“Beefooore!” hissed the priest. His neck popped in cords. “Before before!”
Michael did not dare look away from the priest, but he swore that he could almost feel Patrick’s reaction ping across the air to him, asking why a man in The Game was so mean. Patrick, getting more and more scared . . .
From the woods: “Beeee—fooo—beeeeeffooorrrreeee!”
Calm again, as if comforted by the roars, the priest said:
“Confess, child. In the night. You killed the Chosen.”
The crowd murmured agreement. Did they sound closer than before?
Michael’s groin filled with ice. “The what?”
“God’s Chosen, Michael Faris.”
“Well . . . I’m not exactly sure what you mean by ‘God’s Chosen.’”
But with blossoming dread, Michael thought he did know why Rulon called the Bellow he’d killed “the Chosen.”
The way the Bellow was bound to the altar in the church. The way other “God-Blessed” Bellows were buried in front of the meeting hall: sealed and untouchable, as if they were being protected.
They . . . oh God. Oh effing no. Do these people worship the Bellows?
“You think this is your victory, don’t you, child?” said the priest.
Michael blinked. “I . . . victory?”
“But you are the victor of nothing. You destroyed our First, but ohhh, more of the Chosen pass through these hills around our town and come to us every day, don’t they? Your friends may have tried to force us from our homes, but we’re back, now, aren’t we? And you cannot keep us out of your shelter forever. This is not your victory, no, child. Tell me: Why did the others send you?”
Michael stood stone-faced, refusing to betray his emotions. But something strong and good roared in his chest. There are others. Nearby. Others, who this a-hole hates.
Which means, probably, they’re awesome.
Others, as in the Safe Zone?
He didn’t know; doubted it, actually.
But he could not help but picture the ending he’d been fighting to reach since Halloween: he pictured walking into the Safe Zone, holding Patrick’s hand. And he pictured Mom, the little birthmark on her left cheek twitching, like it always did when she saw him and was about to smile; he pictured her pride in him, her happiness.
Ringed by the crowd, the madman’s rifle zeroed over his heart, Michael mentally calculated how long it would take to dive back into the car, find the keys, and plow an escape through these lunatics.
Way too long.
Michael looked into the priest’s eyes. And what he saw inside them—the certainty and fury—made him . . . calm.
You can’t outrun him. So outplay him.
Yeah, the Game Master never told you about fighting a psycho priest, but outplay him—just do this one last thing—and maybe The Game can be over. Just like the Game Master promised.
The End Games Page 5