The End Games (22 page)

Because Hank said, “You’re right.”

Patrick said, forlorn but cooperating, “I’m hungry.”

No objections. No fights.

“So y’all best get on to bed. Me, I got some securin’ of the perimeter to do.”

No one is asking why the Rapture are attacking
now.

Or why Jopek made us go out.

“I just got one question,” said Jopek. “You helped Bobbie down, yeah, Mike?”

Michael’s pulse butterflied in his throat. Slowly, he nodded.

“Did you know she was bit?” the captain said.

They watched him. And what Michael realized was, there would be no good in telling
them the truth. The words would leave him and become theirs, and everyone would put
together the wrong puzzle. They would only see a reckless, skinny kid who’d grabbed
the captain’s gun. A kid who’d put them all in danger by trying to save Bobbie, and
to what end?

Michael shook his head. “No clue.”

“None?
Genius,” Hank scoffed. Hank was going to apologize for questioning the captain by
being mean to Michael.

But to Michael’s shock, Jopek only said, “Take the man at his word, Henry.” He rubbed
the back of his neck, his forehead crinkled in what looked like pain. “Shit, we got
a lot ahead of us now, but I’ll guaran
tee
somethin’ we ain’t gonna do: rip our platoon apart, not trust each other. Now y’all
get to sleep. Things’ll look brighter tomorrow, guarantee you that.

“Anyhow. Like Michael said. The soldiers will be here soon.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Soldiers will be here soon
. The words, clanging and swooping inside his head.
Like Michael said.

Patrick lay down on a cot in the Senate chambers later that night, the tips of his
hair sharp with water out under the edge of his WVU wool cap. Their previous bedroom,
the lieutenant governor’s office, had been ransacked by the Rapture. Black night dipped
in through the windows: this side of the Capitol was a face turned from the moon,
and the objects cast across the floor—an iPod, two toy guns—were only weird buoys
floating disembodied in the dark. Hank’s vague form, far away on a cot, shifted. Wind
like a far train in the halls.

Michael pulled Patrick’s blanket to his armpits, to let him tuck it under himself
the way he liked. But Patrick didn’t.

How long do you think until that unit gets here?
everyone had asked.
What road were you on when you saw them? Are you
sure
you don’t know?
Not in so many words, not in words at all. But building up to words, which Patrick
would hear and be confused and frightened by: Michael could hear it in the way their
breath kept pausing as if on unformed sentences. And suddenly, barely, Michael got
an idea: “I’m going to give Patrick a shower.” They had, after all, not had a real
one in weeks. They had, after all, earned it, getting to this, ha-ha, Safe Zone. Hank
had still been asking questions as Michael carried Patrick away.

Who was it that said people need hope?

It was Bobbie.

When Patrick stripped in the showers attached to the Capitol’s weight room, the rodlike
appearance of his ribs sent a black surge of helplessness through Michael that nearly
made him shake. Patrick’s hands were going up to his ears, and Michael knew that he
was going to begin scratching at them, yanking at them, and Michael looked in his
eyes and saw a flash of what Patrick saw—him, bewildered and depressed and scared—and
understood what he
wanted
to see instead. So Michael “slipped” on the shower’s clean tiles until Patrick smiled.
His smile was no more real than Michael’s.

While they were showering, Captain Jopek sneaked into Michael’s frightened mind. In
his imagination, Jopek placed the cold eye of his pistol to the back of his head.
“If you care ’bout Bobbie Lou so much
,” he whispered,
“I’ll be glad to send you to her.
” Michael knew it was not real, but he turned again and again, almost expecting to
see the captain pixelate into existence from the shower mist, like some grim phantom
coming to issue judgment and death.

Michael sat down next to Patrick’s cot. He noticed dust on the blanket and brushed
it clean. Brushed it, brushed it.

“Michael?” his brother said.

“Well, better hit the hay,” Michael replied too quickly. He stopped brushing the blanket,
couldn’t figure out where to put his hands instead. His thighs.

Stop looking at me, Patrick. Stop trying to figure out how I feel. You won’t like
it.

“Are you gonna talk to the Game Master tonight?” Patrick said hesitatingly. A bitter,
frightening laugh tried to rise in Michael’s throat. “Will you ask him why’s he lettin’
the Bellows change? And the cheaters keep cheating? And what we’re gonna do tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

And it won’t matter.

“Time to sleep, though. Do you want a pill?” Michael said.

Patrick hesitated, obviously divided.

You didn’t need one last night, when you thought I got us safe,
Michael thought.

After a moment’s pause, Patrick nodded.

Michael got the Atipax bottle from their bag, angling it so that Patrick couldn’t
see how few were left. Two more pills after this one.

Patrick stuck out his tongue and carefully put the pill on it. A little water dribbled
down his chin as he drank from the Red Cross plastic water bottle. Red crosses. Madness
written on the walls.

“Thank you,” Patrick said, wiping his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Michael blurted. Couldn’t help it.
I’m sorry I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry that I didn’t realize that the Safe Zone
didn’t mean The End. Sorry we’re in this room, breathing the same air as these people
.
Sorry you want to be like me. ’Cause, what exactly do you think you’ll be if you
are
like me?

“Sorry . . . I snapped at you when we were going to the movie theater,” Michael finished.

“No, you did a good job, Gamer!” Patrick said. His face was a mask of enthusiasm.
And right then, Michael realized something. Lying on an abandoned cot in the dark
heart of the Capitol and all of its false promises, Patrick was not pretending to
be brave or to feel okay.

Patrick’s trying to make
me
feel better
. Michael’s face prickled, a burn of shame.
Michael is my protector,
Patrick had always thought.
Michael is my own Safe Zone
. But that image of Michael was breaking apart.

Who are you, Michael?
he seemed to be secretly asking.
Who are you, and what’s going to happen to me?

Patrick turned onto his side, facing the window.
Turning away because he knows I’m upset. Sleep tight, don’t let the Bellows bite,
Bub. But they will in your dreams. Because you think I can’t protect you. Because—

“Do you know what a jack-o’-lantern is?” Michael said.

Patrick rolled back to Michael after a reluctant pause. “Pumpkin,” he said, his brow
knitting, rubbing his nose on his sleeve.

“R-right,” Michael said, nodding in what he hoped was a thoughtful fashion. “But do
you know where they
come from
, I mean?”

Patrick answered, “Walmart?”

“Ha, no. They’re actually this tradition from Ireland. People used to believe that
on Halloween night, ghosts came back to earth.”
You’re gonna scare him, idiot
. “They believed this ’cause they were newbs,” he added.

“See, the Irish people thought that ghosts would go from house to house on Halloween,
so—”

“Ghosts eat candy?”

Michael barked laughter. A sleep-mutter and a creak of springs sounded from Hank’s
cot across the room. It felt wonderfully warm, wonderfully whole, to laugh like that.

Patrick’s face brightened a little.

“No, Bubbo, ghosts don’t trick-or-treat. They can’t hold the bags, for one thing.
Ectoplasm all over the candy. Buzzzz killll.”

Patrick’s smile, touching his sleepy eyes, felt even better than Michael’s own laughter
had. Actual fact: it wasn’t even a close call.

“So yeah, we got Ireland, dead folks, Halloween—”

“Heh. It’s funny,” Patrick said. “Monster stuff coming on Halloween. Like in The Game.”

Michael blinked.
Jeezus cripes,
he thought.
Yeah. Wow.

He felt that feeling of things
syncing
. He thought of the church, of the hot-air balloon rising out of the night. He understood
that Bobbie would perhaps have said that the feeling inside of him was the voice of
something supernatural: a whisper emanating from some secret, tremendous Power that
commanded everything that had happened in this world and everything yet to arrive.
Michael had never believed in that sort of “God” before Halloween—and he certainly
didn’t believe in it now, after Bobbie died so hideously, so unfairly. But he didn’t
quite know
what
the feeling was. He knew that it was a little scary, a little out-of-control. But
(perhaps because the feeling overpowered the pain) Michael didn’t push the feeling
away.

He rode it. Like a dark wave.

“Yeah,”
Michael whispered,
“the ghosts did come back on Halloween. They came to possess living people. They used
living bodies, like people-suits. But do you think the Irish wanted to be taken over?”

Patrick shook his head, happily engaged.

“Right on, duder. So they found a way to trick the ghosts into taking over something
else,” Michael said. “Because the ghosts were looking for a warm body . . .”

The words hung there, Patrick looking confused.

“Warm body with a face . . .”

“A jack-o’-lantern!” Patrick exploded, like a kid yelling
BARNYARD BINGO!

“Hey!”
Hank hissed from his cot across the room.

“Hey-hey!” Patrick replied. To which Hank had no retort.

“Yep: jack-o’-lanterns. Like guards, to keep things safe. And Bub, guess what we got
right here?”

Michael pointed out the window; they could just see it, the crest of orange-bright
canvas on which snow fell. The jack-o’-lantern hot-air balloon.

Patrick finally slept.

Bub had just begun snoring when a hand grabbed Michael by the shoulder.

He flinched, the springs squeaking beneath him. But the person who grabbed him wasn’t
who he’d been afraid it would be.

“Good evening,”
Holly whispered. He could smell her citrusy gum, but he couldn’t see her expression:
his own shadow obscured her face. “There’s something I need your help with,” she said,
and cocked her head toward the door
,
silently leaving the Senate chambers before he could answer.

He thought:
No, I shouldn’t go. I shouldn’t talk to anyone. I’ll have to just lie more, anyway.

But Michael couldn’t help it: he
wanted
to follow Holly.

The windows in the hallway looked out on the courtyard of Government Plaza. Michael
saw that, for the first time since he’d reached the Safe Zone, Bellows had breached
the defense systems on the bridge between the Capitol and downtown. Two dozen or so
monsters—who must have gotten in through the fence’s “buffer zones” before Jopek could
relock the gates—roamed freely in the fence maze.

Holly stood by the last window at the very end of the hall, looking outside, the moon
so strong that she cast a shadow. Michael hesitated momentarily again, thinking it
would be better to go back, but then walked on.

“Hey,”
he whispered as he reached her.

Before Holly turned to him, she started a polite grin. The grin never made it to her
eyes—although Michael got the sense that she was trying very hard to
make
it do so. “Hiya,” she said, not quite meeting his gaze.

There was a long silence.

Michael said, “Sorry, um . . . you
did
want me to help you with something, right?”

“No. Yeah, I mean. Kind of.” Holly gave up her not-smile and shook her head in aggravation—
at me?
“Sorry I’m weird. Shit.” She didn’t say it with her usual self-deprecating jokiness,
though: she was being mean to herself. “I saw that you were awake, and I was thinking
I could change that dressing on your neck for you,” she said. And before Michael could
respond, she opened a door across the hall into a small fancy-ish sort of break room.

Disappointment settled heavily in Michael’s chest.
Well, what the hell did you expect her to want with you?
He’d just been thinking of their possibly flirty conversation yesterday, how good
it felt to experience a distraction from the horrors of the “paused” world.

“Over here, if you please,” Holly said, pointing to an overstuffed chair.

Michael stopped in the doorway. “You know, don’t worry about it.”

“No worries, won’t take two minutes.” She pulled a stool next to the chair, opening
a first aid kit.

I don’t want to do something that’s “good for me” right now, Holly. I don’t want to
“take care of myself.” I want to just be with you
.

“Holly, I can do it myself, really—”

“I know you can,” she said, her voice shaky. “But I really would like to be able to
do something useful right now.”

For the first time since leaving the Senate chambers, Holly’s gaze met his full on.
What he saw there was sadness, confusion, fear about everything that had happened
today.

He offered tentatively, “I guess I’m just a little nervous it’ll hurt.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, you might not be able to guess this, Holly,” Michael sighed, “but I am a man
haunted by a tragic bikini-waxing incident.”

He watched her frown relax, warmed by the joke. “Oh no, I totally got that vibe from
you. It felt like bad manners to bring it up, though.”