The End Games (19 page)

Now everyone felt for one another as they moved in past the last of the light, holding
the shoulders of the person before them like a blind-man’s chain: Captain, Holly,
Hank, then Patrick and Michael.

Captain Jopek, his gun light lancing like a glisten-sharp sword, looked like the point
man of a covert team in
Battlefield 3
. “All right now, check your corners,” Jopek said, “staircase over there, Jopek, check
it, clear, bet your ass it’s clear.”

His body moved with the precision of a machine. Every step was solid and certain of
purpose and stealthy—but Michael did not feel any admiration for Jopek’s power right
then. It seemed arrogant to him, and ugly.

Heading through a theater-room door, which was splattered with dried blood.

People were in their seats,
Michael saw,
when different villains shambled in. One scream. Popcorn arcs in the cut of movie
light and the audience boils up with panic. Stampede for the too-small door. Panic
when people begin to be bitten; panic, and in the half-light, it is not possible to
tell who is good and who is not.

Cold wind uncoiled through the theater door, whickering dead leaves up the aisle.
Patrick slipped a little; Michael did not look at him but gave his shoulders a reassuring
squeeze.

“What’s under there?” Patrick whispered. “What’s under the leaves?”

Something weird, under the crackling leaf-carpet—soft, but with a gooey weight.

“Ho’, shit,”
said the captain, as if seeing something up ahead. “Ho’
goddamn
.”

“Captain,” said Hank. “What’s the situation?”

The captain swung the gun light up and speared the silver screen.

A shape seemed to shift beyond the movie screen.

“Captain,” Holly murmured to herself. “Should we be here?”

The captain was striding toward the screen now: fast and sure, until he skidded again,
on something slick, the gun light a quick slice across the movie screen. And it was
at that moment that fear began to rise in Michael like poison water rushing up a well,
because there were other shadows behind the silver screen; they were growing, now
they were more defined, like something drawing closer in a nightmare from the other
side of the veil. Patrick grabbed Michael’s hip and said,
“Look.”
Down the aisle, the captain regained his footing and his weapon rose, and while Holly
gasped in revelation and Hank began to holler, Patrick said,
“Look! Michael, LOOK!”
And, now, Michael did. In the reflected silvery half-light, it was hard to tell what
Patrick held pinched between his thumb and index fingers.

But Michael looked closer.

And the thing dangling from Patrick’s fingers looked directly back at him.

It was an eye, a human eye, torn with the ropey rosy stalk still attached.

The movie screen. It bulged. Teeth and hands burst seams through it. And there in
the vivid gun light were Bellows, two dozen Bellows, coming forth like three-dimensional
demons breaking free from the scariest movie ever made.

Hank hollered. Holly cried out, stumbled back on a seat.

The captain only laughed and opened fire, filling the room with his perfect, video-game-hero’s
fire, the gun bursts flashbulbing his perfect hero’s face.

Michael watched Holly, saw the relief on her face, the same that he himself had felt
when the captain mowed Bellows from his balloon—

—but this is
different!
The captain isn’t just “saving us” right now!
Michael thought.
The captain isn’t noticing something!

Eyes. The eyes!

The Bellows coming from the movie screen: they had no eyes.

“Uh-oh!” Patrick shouted at something behind them, his voice half-fright, half-fun
as he pulled out his toy gun.

Michael spun, seeing the several shadows lurching through the theater door. The captain
paused to reload.

Michael listened to the monsters’ footsteps: like glass, like crunching broken glass.

They came in through the front door
, he understood.
Even though it’s daylight, they came in through the front door, and stepped on the
glass the captain broke!

“Captain!”
shouted Michael.
“We have to get out
now
!”

“For twenty points,” he added under his breath. Michael picked up Patrick and sprinted
down the aisle toward the captain.

“Captain, we have to leave!”

“
Stand down
,” the captain barked, still smiling, his eyes glittering. He was firing on the screen
again. “Captain’s got this; can’t be that many back there. Ha!—sons-a-bitches can’t
even
see
!”

“
Captain
,” Hank shouted, “
behind us
—”

The captain whirled and popped four perfect shots to destroy the brains of the Bellows
in the theater doorway. He spat tobacco, spun back, resumed his firing on the theater
screen . . . 

. . . and were there more Bellows there now, even though he’d been massacring them?
. . .

Yes-yes.

Michael reached the captain, forcefully grabbed his shoulder. The captain tore his
shoulder away, and his glare blazed into Michael.

“Listen!” Michael shouted. “They’re all coming from outside! If we don’t go, they’ll
trap us in here!”

“Outside?” The captain laughed. “It’s still daylight.”

“
I know it is, but . . .” Michael began—and the thought finished itself:
“—they tore their eyes out so they could go outside in the day!”

The captain glowered. “Get back, and that’s a goddamn order.”

You have to get us out, Michael!
he thought. At that moment he remembered:
The captain’s got another gun strapped to his ankle.

Michael knelt so quickly that even the captain could not react in time. Michael found
the Velcro and unstrapped Jopek’s combat-issue pistol in one seamless,
yes-yes
move.

Michael felt a joy at the captain’s anger.

“The
hell
?” said Captain Jopek, gaping at Michael, as if astonished that this skinny kid stealing
his gun could exist at all.

And that was the only reason Michael had time to turn and run up the aisle, saying
to Holly and Hank, “This way,” firing his own three perfect shots at the new Bellows
streaming in through the theater door.

What am I doing
w
hat am I doing
.

Answer: Grabbing the controller, FTW!

Michael charged into the hall and Patrick held on piggyback and Michael felt Patrick’s
excitement and his own blood and spotted his reflection in the glass poster cases
and thought,
Hot diggity—badass
.

“Faris!” Hank barked, running behind him, voice strained with confusion. “Wait for
the captain!”

Two Bellows moaned in the lobby—a fireman, a thin woman in a polka-dot dress. Shot
down with his huge handgun. “He’ll catch up,” Michael told Hank, because he
did
hear the captain firefighting his way out of the theater, and at the last moment
before Michael led Hank and Holly into the blazing sunset, the captain dashed around
a corner into the lobby and shouted:

“
Don’t you go out there! There’s still m—”

But the rest of the captain’s shout was drowned out.

Because Michael had been right.

Outside Bellows roared and echoed death-calls, clots in the bright bloody light, moaning
from the sides of the shopping square corn maze, coming closer. Despite the joyous
adrenaline of the moment, the previously impossible sight made a clean run of terror
through Michael. The walking dead. The dead, in
daylight
.

“C’mon!” Michael said, leading everyone from the infested theater.

“Goddammit!”
the captain shouted.
“Ho’ up!”

The stalks of the corn maze ahead surged and whipped.
“Daaaamn—GOOODDD—”
the maze roared. Bellows reached out from the corn sightlessly, their eye sockets
cored to oval pits of gristle. Michael gave the maze a wide berth.

He had just begun running past it when the captain opened fire in his direction.

The maze exploded. The land mine, on the other side of the maze’s fence only ten feet
to Michael’s right, blew high as the captain’s bullet struck it, raising a man-tall
spiral of concrete and fire. Hot air displaced into Michael; he cried out and stumbled
to the ground. Debris peppered down; more camouflaged mines detonated.
Whampf!—WHAMPF!
Corn and walking corpses leapt.

Michael’s ears rang. He blinked down at Patrick, who had fallen on a hay bale beside
him. “Too
loud
!” Patrick said.

Now the captain was long-strong striding, gun nocked, past him.

“What was
that
?” Michael spat.

The captain said, his eyes glittering both bitterly and happily, “Didn’t think you’d
seen the Zeds in the maze. Just protectin’ you, Mikey.”

The captain led Hank and Holly around the maze, first clearing the route ahead with
three grenades, lob-shot from the undercarriage of his gun. Michael picked up Patrick
and rubbed his back, dashing through the avenue the grenades had cleared.

At last, they came around the end of the maze . . . and Michael realized one of the
screams did not belong to the Bellows.

“Bobbie.”

The creatures had surrounded the Hummer. Bobbie was on top of the vehicle, at the
gun. It should have been fine;
should have
. But the gun was clicking drily. It was a thing he would hear in dreams for the rest
of his life: despite the Bellows and the distance, that heartbreaking and toylike
click
!

“Here! HERE! Captain, I am
here!” Bobbie called.
“The roof-hatch won’t OPEN!”

“God, no,” Holly moaned miserably.

Michael raised the handgun, but his finger froze on the trigger. His hands were still
quivering: what if the bullet flew wild?

Patrick, in his arms, moaned, “What’s happenin’? What happens if they get Bobbie?”

And yet here now came the most awesome thing Michael had ever seen.

It was a great enormous sweeping majesty, a sight that should have been projected
widescreen, HD, two hundred feet tall and twice that wide to tower in glorious slow-motion.
The captain’s gun flying up to his shoulder as he sprinted. His eyes were single glowing
firing pins. His face was a tuned searchlight. Like some tremendous flame exploding
through the glass and rafters of a structure that can no longer contain it, Jopek
was
force
. He was
unleashed
.

The Bellows fell like a sacrificial ring around the vehicle, with the Hummer never
even dented by a single imperfect bullet.

Dumb gratitude overpowered Michael. The captain plucked the pistol out of Michael’s
hands.

Do what you want
,
Jopek,
he thought.
Whatever it is; just get us back.
The Bellows were beginning to clog the street and the way back home would be rough,
but who cared; now everyone was rushing to Bobbie, and she was shaking but beginning
to smile. Holly and Hank piled into the back of the Hummer; Michael put Patrick in
there, too, and the captain was getting in the front. Michael said that he’d help
Bobbie down from the roof, went to the passenger side, which was the area most cleared
of corpses.

“Come on! Hurry hurry quick, we’ve got you!”

Bobbie put a shaky hand on her chest and sat, scooting her legs over the edge. Her
coat ballooned at her waist. And she slid off.

It was Bobbie who first spotted the monster’s arms shooting out from beneath the Hummer.

She was beginning to fall toward Michael’s awaiting arms when her face went shock
pale in the last of the dusk. She tried to turn back, to grab out, to regain the roof.

She landed between Michael and the Hummer, one ankle bowing in.

The Bellow’s rottening hands grasped Bobbie’s jean-clad calves.

Not happening
.

The monster’s face emerged from the darkness beneath the Hummer. In life it had been
a girl, no more than eight years old. The Bellow opened its mouth and an insect slithered
out, went up its eaten nostril.

Yellow teeth met Bobbie’s pants just below the ankle:
riiiiiipp!

NOT HAPPENI—

Bobbie’s head tossed back; her spine rattled. Michael grabbed her, kicking the Bellow’s
head until its neck snapped and its head lolled.

He didn’t look at Bobbie’s face. He looked straight at her leg. No blood.
It’s fine. She didn’t get bit.
The denim had stopped the teeth.
A miracle.

Then, blood.

A thin single streak of red leaked out of the hole in her jeans and began to fill
her sock.

Bobbie locked her horror-white eyes with Michael’s.

And as she began to scream, he clapped his hand over her mouth.

Though panicked, he felt his breath, his quaking chest.

No one was watching.

“
Don’t
,” he whispered to her. “
Don’t—don’t tell anyone
.”

What are you
doing,
Michael?!

Bobbie’s eyes shouted:
But—

I can’t let her die,
Michael thought.
I should have seen that Bellow—she is
not
just going to die!

“
Listen to me
,” he said. “
We’ll—we’ll figure something out
.”

Bobbie’s gaze trailed down to her ankle. Total terror, that’s what was in her eyes.
But was there also a faintest hope?

Lie to her, Michael. Lie, hurry, she’s going to die, this is a lady who’s actually
going to die so lie, LIE
.

His stomach hurt, and yeah he felt sick, but he said the thing that activated the
only chance he had: