The End Games (12 page)

“So what is your favorite breakfast, Michael? Bacon and eggs? Oatmeal? Cereal?” She
went on, but Michael stopped listening around “bacon,” because he saw a pile of it
on Muscle Guy’s plate, shiny with grease, and his stomach went,
Baaaaacon?
And itself answered,
BAAAAACON!

He nodded. “Bacon works.”

Food. Was. Good.

Not stale Pop-Tarts or beef jerky; not prepackaged calories served car-temperature—
f-o-o-d
. The flavors burst, so intense that for the first couple minutes, Michael’s jaws
ached. It was weird, being the center of attention, but not so weird that he stopped
eating. Too good. I-have-questions-but-I-also-have-bacon-and-guess-which-I-love-more
good.

A few times, Muscle Guy (“Henry,” he said, “but I prefer Hank. So call me Hank. Question—”)
tried to cut in, but the woman, who introduced herself as Bobbie Louise, gently hushed
him.

When Michael had sat down next to Patrick, he’d whisper-asked where Mom was, now that
they’d “got to The End.”

“We’ll find out, Bub,” Michael told him.

Patrick nodded. “Is this the big party?” he asked. And when Michael shook his head,
Patrick replied, “Oh, okay.” It came out sounding like,
Oh, thank crap. ’Cause that would have been lame.

If there were other sections in the Safe Zone, Michael supposed it could be a couple
hours before he found Mom. He allowed himself to draw up the image he’d had in his
mind these past few weeks, the image of The End: him holding Patrick’s hand as they
walked across a bright Safe Zone room, spotting Mom in a crowd, her looking up at
him, proud and so, so happy.

As Michael finally finished his hash browns (wonderfully greasy), Hank said, “Question,”
for the fifth time. “How’s the situation out there?”

Michael set down his orange juice slowly. He traced his finger over the sweat on the
side of his glass, struggling for an honest answer.

“Super cold,” Patrick suggested to Michael quietly.

The old woman laughed. Patrick looked up at her with a surprised delight, but then
almost seemed to catch himself. He looked back to Michael, doing his songless humming
thing.

“And there’s not many humans,” Michael said. “Have you guys noticed that there have
been more of those, uh, Things, sort of gathering, moving in bigger groups?”

“Have we friggin’ ever,” Hank nodded. His voice was clipped, though. Was the deepness
of his voice changing a little every time he spoke, like he was trying to sound more
manly, or something? “They were easy to deal with the first couple weeks. Scattered.
Then it was almost like they started . . . coordinating, I dunno. Maybe it’s just
that they were looking for
people
, and they were getting better at finding us, so they all started attacking around
the same time. But it’s weird.

“Anyway, been out there long, man? What’s your time line?” Hank pulled a tattered
spiral-bound notebook from his pocket, uncapped a pen.

Michael’s eyes flicked to the notebook, his stomach tightening a little
.
He suddenly felt wary of speaking about their time in the outside world and confusing
Bub. “Since Halloween,” he replied.

Hank, who had been leaning across the table, fell back in his chair. “You’ve been
out there
the whole goddamn time
?”

Patrick, halfway through a piece of bacon, froze, eyes popping, like he had just heard
someone fart. Protectiveness and a little anger blossomed hotly in Michael’s stomach.

“Hey, let’s keep it PG in here,” Michael said amiably.

Hank snorted a laugh like Michael was making a joke. But when Michael didn’t return
the laugh, Hank stared, as if trying to gauge if Michael was serious about protecting
Bub from cuss words in a world where there were, y’know, monsters trying to eat him.

Finally, Hank said, “Uh, whatever, dude, sure.” Michael nodded, friendly . . . although
he realized that Hank—good-looking in a hard kind of way; striped track pants, cigarette
breath—would probably not have been his friend in the world Before.
And not just because, ha-ha, I don’t technically “have friends.”

“I think what Hank is trying to say is, what were y’all
up to
the whole
daggum
time, Michael?”

The girl leaned forward on her elbows across the table, her eyebrows raised in an
open, friendly expression. Her hair, short and choppy, was so darkly red that it was
almost black. She wore wire-rim glasses and a bright blue hoodie over an
EPCOT
T-shirt.

“Looking for the Safe Zone, is all,” Michael replied. He impressed himself by being
able to look the girl in the eye for almost an entire second.

“It took you
three weeks
?” Hank scoffed, as if taking so long to battle lots of dead-slash-insane people was
just ridiculous.

Michael’s shoulders pinched back. He felt a surprising twinge that he didn’t like,
an ugly defensiveness.

“Yeah, well,” he said, making his voice steady, “we were in my stepdad’s cabin in
the middle of nowhere for the first week. There were a few Things out there in the
woods. Nothing me and my gun couldn’t handle.”

Michael paused, waiting for Hank to nod, maybe look impressed—something. But Hank
kept quiet, just waiting for him to go on.

Well, who cares what he thinks?
Michael told himself. He still felt a little sheepish, though, as he finished. He
told Hank that they’d gotten low on food in the cabin, had heard Safe Zone announcements
on their car radio. But by the time they’d backtracked on the roads they’d come to
the cabin on—the only country roads Michael was familiar with, and the only interstate
entrance he knew how to reach—the towns were all deserted, the interstate ramp impassable
because of abandoned cars and barbed-wire blockades.

“And we had to play ‘Siphon the Gas’ a lot!” Patrick added.

“And you made it
without
a fortress and a bizagillion guns. It is impressed upon me that you are impressive,”
said the girl. “I’m Holly, by the way,” she informed him.

“Patrick,” Patrick said, surprising Michael with his boldness, however small.

She grinned, so wide it was actually a little big for her face. But yeah, wow: cute.
Undeniably cute.

“And this cabin was . . . where?” said Hank, nodding eagerly to his notepad.

“Is it cool if I ask why you’re taking notes?”

“Orders,” Hank said as if it should have been obvious.

Orders from whom
?

Michael told Hank it was near a popular (if isolated) ski resort in the northern part
of West Virginia. “Canaan Valley. You know it?”

“I’m from Atlanta. No clue, champ.”

“Sorry, slugger,” Michael said. The gently ribbing joke was for Patrick, but Holly
chuckled. Hank’s pen paused; he looked confused.

“So, you’re at the cabin,” Hank said, returning to his notes, “you leave; after a
while, things get worse. And you didn’t see the army or any of the search parties
until a couple days ago, just before you were rescued. Right?”

Patrick looked up at Michael.

Hank thinks I saw a search party. He must have talked with that captain from last
night,
Michael instantly understood. And giving an answer to Hank’s question would only
spiral to more questions about the soldiers: questions that would require more lies.

And man, I’m done with lying.

“Hey, I’m sorry. Just, do you mind a bunch if
I
ask a couple things?” Michael said. He really
was
burning with the questions that had been pulsing on the edge of his thoughts since . . . well,
since he saw that first dead Bellow shambling toward him on Halloween. Except, he
wanted to be careful about what he said around Bub.

“Where were you guys when you first got . . . pulled into this?” Michael asked. Hank
began to speak up, but Michael, worried he might swing the subject back to the soldiers,
added: “Bobbie?”

Bobbie’s calm, thin smile did not falter, but he thought he saw something painful
pass behind her eyes.

“Well. I don’t know if it’s my favorite story,” she said. “But they do say a person
never forgets where she was when poor President Kennedy was shot. Or when those planes
hit the Towers. So I guess I’ll remember it forever, whether I want to or don’t.

“I was with my husband, Jack. We were playing rummy on our airplane trays. Things
had gotten so bad near our home in Tennessee; the government began emergency flights
to Safe Zones. One hundred and ten souls on board our flight to Charleston. Everyone
on the flight was supposed to be well; the pilot snuck his wife on, and she wasn’t.”
Quickly, Bobbie said, “And you, Henry?”

Hank sighed through his nose, as if he was bursting with other things he’d rather
discuss. “In Atlanta. School. Came here when the action started. Our dad”—he indicated
himself and Holly—“came up to help right after the Zeds were first on the news. Like
a lot of people did. He brought us.”

Michael felt a momentary—and immediately embarrassing—happiness, finding out that
the guy Holly was sitting next to was her sibling.

“So there are . . . uh, Zeds, you called them, in Atlanta, too? And Tennessee?”

“There weren’t at first. It seemed to start somewhere in West Virginia, actually.
Now? Who knows, man. Government shut down internet and phones in the Safe Zones almost
right after the Zones were set up.”

“Why?”

“’Cause the only way they could keep things under control—make everyone come to the
Zone—was to control what people knew about what was going on,” Holly said. “‘Information
is power,’ etc. It kept people calm. That was a good day or two, ha-ha.”

There was something in her tone Michael couldn’t quite read. It sure wasn’t amusement,
though.

“We don’t even friggin’ know for total-sure where the first case was,” Hank said.
“Some places were worse than others—it was bad here—but there was so much shit going
down at first—” Hank’s gaze flicked to Patrick, who had begun blushing. “Err, so much
poop-poop going down.”

“That’s a technical term,” Holly told Patrick. It drew a little laugh from Bub, and
Michael felt a warmth of gratitude.

“They got theories,” Hank continued. “Maybe a virus, a natural sort of deal. All they
know for sure is it’s some kind of brain infection. The captain thinks it’s an attack
from Iran, ’cause of the war. Whatever it is, thank Christ for the soldiers.”

“Yes indeed,” Bobbie said in soft, earnest agreement.

Then Hank picked up his pen again, sitting forward eagerly. “And then there’s the
people you met, right, who think it’s the end-times, that the Zeds are the ones God
chose to bring back to life to take to Heaven first. The Rapture, they call themselves.
Friggin’ rednecks actually
fought
the soldiers when the army tried to bring them to the Safe Zone.”

“Wow, huh,” Michael said, patting Bub on the knee, “some people just don’t play by
the rules. So hey, I probably should get going. Is there, like, a list of where the
other people here are?”

Michael felt Patrick’s energy change, felt his shyness changing to a pure excitement.
Michael’s belly twisted, and he wanted, right then, to get out of this room and just
get Mom
now
.

Then Hank laughed bitterly.

“Other people?” Holly said. A dread growing on her face.

“In the Safe Zone. We’re going to go find our mom.”

“If she’s not
here
, she’s not here,” said Hank.

Michael continued grinning, trying to grasp the punch line of that weird sentence.

“We’re . . . Michael, aside from Captain Jopek, sweetie,
this
is the population of this town. Us,” said Bobbie. “Since a week ago, sweetie.” She
looked at him with pity.

“You mean . . . except for all the soldiers,” Michael replied.

“There’s a
soldier
. Like you said, man, Zeds are moving around in packs now. They overran the perimeters
around the city a week ago,” Hank said.

“I thought—no, hold up. You said ‘thank God for the soldiers.’”

“All the other soldiers evacuated, along with everybody else. Everybody else who wasn’t
massacred, anyway. They went east, to another Safe Zone in Richmond. I meant thank
God for the soldiers
you
saw.”

It was as if Michael had been trotting along at a leisurely pace and then forced,
at the shout of an unseen pistol, to explode into a full-out dash. Automatically,
but with a little panic, he tried to find his blood—but he only felt their eyes, heavy
with expectation and questions.

They think I really saw soldiers,
Michael thought.
Patrick told them I did, and they don’t realize that I just said that because of The
Game. They think I saw Real. Frakking. Soldiers.

Michael remembered the window in the Senate, and the courtyard outside: the
empty
courtyard, the
quiet
halls. How had he not figured it out before? How the hell had he not figured it out?

Stupid—God, so stupid. You idiot, don’t you know: you’re not allowed to let yourself
be happy, not until you
know
it’s The End.

And he felt Patrick’s eyes, with confusion of a different kind:
Why’re you nervous, Michael?

“Yeah, no,” Michael finally said. “You’re right; thank crap for them.”

“Thank
Something
,” Bobbie laughed shakily.

“We knew somebody’d come back,” Hank said nonchalantly, though Michael could tell
he was enormously relieved. “The captain’s been on the radio with some units that
are returning for us, but the last couple days the transmission’s been bad because
of the mountains. So how far away were the soldiers? When do you think they’ll get
here?”

Michael paused, calculating the days.
The soldiers who were here have been gone for a week. They’ll be back, but . . . 
but maybe the Bellows all moving together are making the trip back take longer. That’s
all. But the
real
solders will be back
.