But in that moment, as Patrick stood and looked cautiously to the soldier, a memory arose in Michael: a memory of a circus Mom had taken him to when he was four. He remembered the big-top acrobats that seemed to dangle from the very dome of the sky; he remembered the rich and wondrous kid-smells of cotton candy and salt and animal dung. But mostly, as he watched these men emerge one-by-camouflaged-one from the debris passage, Michael remembered a car speared inside a spotlight’s ring: a tiny car floating out in the dark that opened its door and vomited forth an endless parade of men with false, blood-bright grins. Michael had screamed, but the crowd’s roar had consumed his own, and Mom, not realizing his terror, had asked, “Isn’t this just fun, baby?”
No, it wasn’t fun. And it was not right. Those clowns weren’t really happy people.
They’re just wearing the suits! Michael thought now.
“Don’t move, Patrick!” Michael shouted as he finally broke his paralysis and ran toward Patrick. “Don’t go near that guy!”
Holly said, “What—what—”
“Won!” Patrick crowed, voice croaking with a kind of terrible, desperate joy. “Michael, it’s soldiers! We won The Game! Mom! Mommy!”
Patrick ran away from Michael, toward the soldier.
The soldier peeled off his mask.
Rulon.
The leader of the Coalmount Rapture stood there, as obvious as anyone, but it took Patrick a few seconds to really see.
He cried out, a high, ringing note.
Patrick tried to pedal back, but Rulon was quicker: his hand shot out and seized Patrick’s shoulder.
Patrick bit the man’s fingers.
Rulon drew back his free arm and struck Patrick, hard, across the face.
Patrick’s head rocked backward. But he didn’t even scream.
No, no, no.
Holly cried, “PATRICK!”
“Don’t you touch him!” Michael screamed, and he was still running even as Rulon raised his rifle.
Michael experienced what happened next only as a blast of light and sickly pain flowing through the core of his arm up to his elbow. The world vanished, shimmered out in a reddish fog.
Michael shook his head, trying to clear it. He was on his ass, about ten feet out from Rulon. Blood pulsed through the hole in his space-suit glove. Shot, Michael thought. Rulon raised his gun again, and Michael could not move, and the only thing he could think was: not in front of Patrick.
Holly stepped in front of him, her arms spread like a shield.
“My name is Holly Bodeen. My father is Dr. Gordon K. Bodeen with the Centers for Disease Control. He’s embedded with a special military unit tasked with retrieving the CDC’s cure from Charleston. According to his latest radio transmission, which we received three minutes ago, he and his unit are less than two miles away.”
Rulon smiled pumpkin teeth. “Child. Don’t you know the liars’ punishment?”
“Rulon,” someone said calmly, “stop.” A “soldier” stepped forward from those dozen or so ranged behind Rulon—the only Rapture people, Michael supposed, who had survived the lunatic sacrifices Rulon had conducted.
When Michael realized who the soldier was, he felt a wave of wonder: It was the heavy woman with the sweet, dimpled face who’d spotted him while he tried to escape the Coalmount office of Southern West Virginia Coal and Natural Gas. “Hammy,” he’d called her. She looked so strange, squeezed in the military uniform.
But she also looked worried.
“Oughtn’t we let the older boy go?” she said carefully. “Rulon, shouldn’t we just take the young boy and leave the others?”
Rulon kept his poisonously glittering eyes, and his gun, trained on Holly. “Perhaps more than one sacrifice would be finer. . . .” he said dreamily.
“But didn’t you say earlier that we only need the ‘most innocent blood’?” she said. “Isn’t that what you said . . . Father?” she added.
The silence carried on; Rulon seemed to have not heard. Then a skinny man carrying a red ax began to speak, too. “She’s righ, Fa . . .” He stopped, then cast his eyes to the floor, sheepish and confused.
Rulon’s losing control of them, Michael thought. And it was not hard to see why. The priest had become even more skeletal; his flesh was drawn severely against his cheekbones, his hair was streaked with blood. Rulon looked like he hadn’t slept for days, and his dark eyes seemed almost to roar in his skull, like twin tornadoes.
“Their sins . . . ,” Rulon said, and Michael saw tears of frustration—of building rage—in his eyes, which were now fixed on a point somewhere far overhead. “All I wanted was the boy. All I wanted was the chance to atone for my failure. I knew God would not have taken so much from me without reason. I knew God could not have raised the dead for no reason. All I wanted was the son. Oh, why do you hide him from me?”
Who the hell is he talking to?
“My letter told your captain that all you had to do was bring me the boy,” Rulon said, and now his gaze bore straight into Michael. His breath hitched. A sob rolled up out of him.
Jopek did bring me.
“Oh God, I have done so much to atone. What else must I do? All I want is my son.”
Hammy said worriedly: “Your son?”
The gaunt features of Rulon’s face contorted, changed into a mask of agony and helpless fury; and even as this mountain priest cried out in a wordless reckoning of rage and of love and venom, the understanding hit Michael like a cold bolt.
“All I want is MY SON!” Rulon bellowed. “All I want is MY BOY, MY CADY! All I have ever wanted was to bring my Cady back! But they would not give me his body when the Chosen began to rise, and YOU hid him from me, Michael Faris, you and YOUR CAPTAIN WOULD NOT GIVE ME MY BOY!”
Devastation and confusion fell across the faces of the Rapture. Michael saw the idea they’d had of Rulon evaporate. Their priest had told them that everything he did, every person he ordered them to sacrifice, he had done in order to protect them, to win them all their entry to Heaven.
Was that belief insane? Yes. It was.
But their priest had been a purposeful deceiver. Rulon had been attempting to atone for the accidental death of his son, the little boy who died in the Coalmount mines only days before the dead began to rise. Rulon must have taken that resurrection as a sign, a hope that his son, too, could return. . . . And so Rulon had tried to retrieve his son’s body from its casket in the Capitol; but the Capitol had been already become the Safe Zone. And so Rulon tried to summon the assistance and powers of God with worship and with blood; but that would not work, no, so perhaps just a little more blood would, yes, a little more . . .
And now Rulon was going to sacrifice Patrick, to try to trade one other innocent dead child for his own son.
“Bub, RUN!” Michael said, pushing past Holly, who only then lowered her shielding arms.
Rulon fired over Michael’s head, close enough for him to hear the song of the bullet. Holly screamed, pulling Michael back.
“Speak one more word,” Rulon said through gritted, bared teeth. “I beg you that.”
Rulon picked up Patrick . . . and Patrick’s head lolled back like a broken doll’s. Vomit threatened Michael’s throat, sudden and violent.
“‘Michael,’” murmured Rulon softly to him in the still, dead First Bank of Charleston. “‘God’s warrior.’”
The priest shook his head: a nearly wistful gesture. His forehead was kneaded as if he might weep. And yet, as he looked at Michael’s little brother, he smiled, too.
He looked like . . . hope.
“Michael Faris,” Rulon said, “you are no one’s warrior.”
And that was the end.
The Rapture retreated through the tunnel and, after a second, Michael ignored Holly’s screams and crawled into the shaft, heedless of his wounded hand’s anguish, out to the outer lobby, where he saw the Rapture vanishing into the cockpit of the jet. Rulon fired; Michael was forced to scrabble back, like a frightened dog. But in the last
moment before he retreated, the only thing he saw, really saw, was Patrick: slumped over Rulon’s shoulder, his eyes glassed, his mouth slack and speechless. He was not screaming. He was not crying. He’d been dragged over the final ledge inside himself. He was gone, with nothing and no one to pull him back out this time. He’d Freaked. Welcome to the endtimes, Michael. Welcome to The End.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
No. No. Please please please, no.
Michael rushed from the tunnel, his hand a burning pulse, out across the never-ending lobby and into the street, where he saw the Hummer. He had one shining moment, before he spotted the deflated jack-o’-lantern balloon on its roof and realized that it was Jopek’s Hummer, not Rulon’s.
Michael’d had to wait in the tunnel in the bank, to cower, making sure the Rapture’s silence wasn’t a trick. He’d dashed out the moment he heard the motorcycles and Hummers revving.
But the Rapture—and Patrick—were gone. The only moving thing out here in the street was the snow falling from the black sky.
Run, run, as fast as you can, a voice growled in his head. You can’t catch him, he’s the God-fearin’ man.
Michael dashed farther out in the street, straddling the yellow double line.
Skyscrapers choked out the rising moon, and snow muted the little remaining light. The air carried the thin stink of motor exhaust.
He whirled, throwing his gaze to the west, past the colossal tail of the jetliner. Patches of purple in the darkness: cars, lampposts, buildings. The world totally motionless except for the storm, as if the world had transformed into some nightmarish snow-globe in which Michael was suffocatingly sealed.
He screamed out, “Bub!”
No reply. And he did not see any taillights.
You can’t catch him, he’s the game-endin’ man!
Isn’t this just fun, baby?
No taillights in either direction. He nearly screamed; he closed his eyes; he tried to hear the telltale buzz of engines.
But heard only his heart, exploding in his ears.
An image loaded unbidden to his mind: Rulon’s knife arcing up over his head, Rulon’s knife screaming down, and his brother screaming back. . . .
Holly emerged from the plane.
She marched to the Hummer, not looking at Michael. He stood there, knowing why she was mad but powerless to say anything. Holly popped a compartment above the passenger seat. A moment later she came to him with two flashlights, planting one, unlit, against his chest, still not sparing him a glance.
She strode to the center of the street, her light beam racing back and forth. The light caught the falling snow in a bubble around her, like a storm of meteors, and Michael was again struck with utter loneliness: she looked like a girl firing a distress signal while the world ended at her feet. Michael started telling her the Rapture had left already—then he realized what she was doing. He turned on his flashlight, copying her search for vehicle tracks.
All he saw were footprints: so many.
“Here. This way,” Holly said brusquely after a moment. “Let’s go.”
“W-wait—”
She jabbed her light beam at wide tire imprints in the snow that receded into the west. “The tracks go this way, Michael. That’s the way out of Charleston, to the mountains where their town is.” She had the tone of a teacher explaining something simple to the least favorite student in the class.
“Some already filled in, though,” Michael replied. “What if that’s the way they came from? I mean, the new tracks could’ve been covered by the snow, or the wind, or . . .”
Holly shook her head in frustration and shot her light into his face, blinding him. Michael flinched, raising a hand to block the light as she stamped toward him.
“Okay—fine! Absolutely!” Holly said, her voice quivering. “Where do you think we should go, captain? It must be convincing, since I know you wouldn’t say anything that wasn’t true. So please: hi, I’m Holly, please inform the damsel what you’re thinking.”
Michael began to defend himself, but there was no time. And there was no defending himself. Yes, she saw him plainly now.
“Fine,” he said softly. “We’ll go to Coalmount. That’s probably smart.”
“Oh, excellent. I’m oh-so-glad you trust me.” Holly moved toward the Hummer again.
“Holly, I’m—”
Who are you?
“—I’m sorry. Look, you don’t have to go. This is my fault.”
She spun on him, then. Her glasses flashed fiercely; Holly hurled her flashlight at the ground. The bulb exploded in a burst of bright that illuminated the tears tracing down her cheeks. She thrust a finger at him. “Stop. Right now. Stop talking like you think I don’t care.”
Not defensive.
Furious, misunderstood.
Michael nodded.
And his injured hand beat like a bomb and countdown both.
“Then we should hurry,” Michael said. He went to shut the open rear doors of the Hummer. Maybe Rulon won’t think of me following him to Coalmount. I mean, he is insane.
Yeah, but you have a history of underestimating evil, you goddamn idiot.
He grabbed the handle of the left rear door, and when Holly shouted, “Wait wait wait, there’s somebody in—” Michael jerked away, and accidentally yanked the door with him.
Jopek, coming out of the darkness at him—
Jopek, lunging into the bright tube of his light beam—
Jopek—his corpse—was strapped into the jump seat, his eyes closed, his head lolling bonelessly against his shoulder. Jopek’s face was slack; he might have been sleeping (if he ever did sleep) except for the cake of dark blood on his forehead. That’s where they shot him. Dead. Michael tried to feel . . . he wasn’t sure what: relief, or something. But the sight, the reality, of the corpse made his stomach roll over as if in a cold grease. It wasn’t tidy; the body didn’t fade away like in a game. Killer. Killer.
But why was Jopek’s body out here, when he’d been shot in the lobby of the bank?
“Eff,” breathed Holly shakily at his side. “So this is where he went.”
“What? When?”
“Jopek got up after you went into the tunnel. He was bleeding, like, profusely, and he staggered outside. I don’t think he even knew where he was. I heard him scream. And then I heard people running in the streets.”
She must have seen Michael’s anger forming on his face: And you didn’t warn me? “No, not the Rapture,” she said. “The Bellows in the street. But they weren’t Bellows anymore.”
A realization slowly dawned inside him. He had been running around in an empty street.
The hundreds of corpses that he’d had to high-step an hour ago were gone. How? He didn’t understand.
So add that to the fugging list. Move.
He began pushing the door shut, and a rippingly bright agony flowed up his arm again. He cried out, snapping his hand back.
“Oh man,” Holly said pityingly. For the first time, she looked at him without fury on her face. “That needs a bandage.” She began climbing up the side of the Hummer toward the roof. By now, the jack-o’-lantern balloon, tethered atop the Hummer, had deflated, its hot-air fabric messily collapsed into its passenger basket.
“What are you doing?” Michael said.
“There’s a first aid kit in the balloon.”
“It’s empty,” he said.
“What? How do you know?”
Trust me, he thought.
Holly hopped back down. “Well, we’re going to wrap it with something. You’re losing too much . . .” But she trailed off.
Holly was staring at his bloody sleeve, her forehead kneading in concentration.
“Blood. Red,” she breathed. “You’ve got red all over you.”
“Yeah,” he said confusedly. “I hear that’s what happens when you get shot in the hand.”
But Holly did not respond to his comment. A strange half smile twitched on her lips. She grabbed his flashlight from hi
s good hand and turned away, casting the beam onto the road that had been so recently clotted with not-yet-resurrected Shrieks. “Look,” she said, her half smile now full, her palm pressed to her forehead as if in disbelief. “Look at the road.”
What? Nothing there besides snow.
“The blood—the Bellows’ dried blood!”
The street was crisscrossed with mangled patterns of dark color: the blood spilled from the Bellows that Cady Gibson had bitten to convert them into carriers of his mutation. Michael stared, understanding not at all why this mattered.
“It’s black,” Holly said. “Your blood is different: it’s red. The same color as Jopek’s when he got shot. The same as anyone normal’s blood.”
“It only looks black because it’s dried,” Michael began, but he stopped. Hank’s blood had dripped onto Patrick from the ceiling in the bank . . . and that blood had been black, too.
“Michael,” said Holly, and the wind howled, and she rose her voice against it to tell him, “I don’t think you’re infected!”
“But you said that Cady had to have been infected by a scratch. You said the virus was mutating—”
“As it turns out, Holly was wrong! The virus is mutating, but—I guess not the basic stuff. Scratches still don’t cause an infection. Although how did Cady get sick? And where the hell did all the monsters go?” she said as if to herself.
“Shit,” Michael said. “No no, shit shit.”
“How is being uninfected bad news?!”
Because it shows how freaking wrong I always am, Holly. Because I was fooled. “It’s not. I just was so stupid, I should’ve figured it out somehow—”
“GOD!” Holly shouted.
Michael flinched.
“Michael, do you know what your problem is? You think the whole world is ‘your problem.’ You think that you can fix everything.”
And, flinching again, for a different reason, Michael said, “So—what? ‘Michael, don’t try to help people. Don’t try to save your mom. Don’t try to save Patrick.’”
“You should try,” spat Holly. “But what the hell is the point of feeling so sorry for yourself? You didn’t take Patrick; they did!”
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