The End Games (39 page)

This night in which Patrick’s only recourse was to betray Michael, just as Michael
had betrayed Mom, was what The Game’s lies and false promises had led them to. This
was the absolute end of the line, with no place left to run.

Everything not saved will be lost.

Save your brother.

Remake his world.

Michael felt tears burn his throat. But he nodded and thrust the vial of cure toward
Holly. “Take it.”

Holly gritted her teeth. “Okay, no offense, but you are
pissing me off right now
.”

Michael opened her hand and jammed the cure into it. “Go. Leave. If you find the Safe
Zone, tell them I’m here. If the scientists can copy that vial, send them back with
more for me. But go.”

Holly blinked at him. Michael began walking away from her, not trusting himself to
stay. “Patrick, one second,” she said, and set him down on the ground. Patrick hit
his head, sobbed.

“Michael, what the
hell
are you doing?” When he wouldn’t take the vial with his hand, she jammed it into
the pocket of his space suit.

“Holly, no!” he said.
“
You’ll need it. Please just let me save Patrick! This is the only way to make everything
right.”

“You’re not thinking. You can use this dose, and we’ll bring the rest to Richmond
with us.”

“There is no more, Holly.”

Holly’s brow knitted:
What?

“I lied. There are no soldiers coming for us. I didn’t see any, and Jopek said that
Richmond is overrun, too. I . . . I guess I don’t know if that’s true, but getting
the cure to the scientists is the only chance you’ve got. I’m
not
going to hurt anyone anymore. Not like when I left my mom. Go. Move.”

He went to put his hands on her shoulders, to turn her back toward the tunnel. But
Holly slapped him away. Like Patrick, she seemed as if she was trying to decide if
she recognized a stranger.

“You
promised
that there were other soldiers. Now you’re saying that the Safe Zone where my dad
went might be gone? You’re saying that was a
lie
?”

She really sees me. Finally.

And in that moment, horror flooded him.

But he didn’t answer Holly’s question. He’d just seen something behind her.

The tunnel.

Something coming out of the tunnel.

The passage to the outer lobby had been cored with the very last fire of dusk, but
now that dusk light was flickering.
Something’s blocking it,
he thought.

“Who . . . ?” breathed Holly. Patrick looked at the tunnel, too. And seeing what was
there, stopped sobbing.

A man emerged from the tunnel.

Not a bellowing man. Not a shrieking man.

A living man.

A soldier.

Something flickered on and off in Michael’s mind like a busted sign:
REAL. NOT REAL. REAL. NOT REAL.

Real breath curled out from the gas mask that disguised his face, and Michael thought
wildly:
it’s Jopek!
Jopek had beaten death. Jopek was gonna live forever. But no—this man was way too
short.

Patrick had been sitting perhaps fifteen paces away, halfway between Michael and the
tunnel and the man who had come from it. Patrick sat up from the floor now. He turned
to Michael, his face raw and streaked . . . but filling with a little amazement.

“Did we
win
?” asked Patrick.

The camouflaged man raised a gloved hand and beckoned Patrick with one finger.

Other soldiers crawled out of the tunnel behind the first. Michael heard Holly laugh
a little in relief, perhaps in joy.

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!