The End Games (7 page)

Michael and Patrick hadn’t found any weapons in their canvass of Coalmount. Evidently,
that was because they hadn’t thought of the church as a possible arsenal.

The congregation reemerged with two axes, three pipes, four crowbars, and seven pistols.
The priest himself cradled a rifle with a scope and banana clip.

He motioned in different directions, and the people began spreading into the streets
and side streets and alleys, like a great spiderweb being spun.
Looking for us. Oh God, yeah, it’s a search party, just not the kind I wanted
.

One woman was waiting in the road. A hammy woman—red coat, no gloves, a sweet, dimpled
face—paced parallel to the coal office, not fifty feet from the front door. She was
carrying a crowbar. She raised a hand to her brow, scouting the tree line that rose
behind the buildings on the opposite side of the street. Amazingly, she seemed to
have no interest at all in the side of the street where Michael was hidden.

And she had not even noticed their Volvo station wagon
.

Situated between Michael and the woman—dusted with fresh inches of snow from last
night’s storm—was the only possible hope of escape for the people she was stalking.

God bless you, crappy West Virginia winter!
“Gamer, we’ve got to sneak out. I bet you’ll do it
awe
some, huh?”

“H-heck yeah,” Patrick said weakly. And added with a struggle: “woot.”

God, he tried so hard.
Ya-ya
.

Michael thought:
Breathe. Just breathe.

Here,
Michael thought,
we go
.

And
did
.

In the milli-moment when Hammy was turning and turning away, Michael, carrying his
rifle and his brother both, opened the door of the office of Southern West Virginia
Coal and Natural Gas, and silently stepped out.

Because he did not want the steam to rise, he locked his breath inside his mouth.

And in his temples, he felt his thudding blood.

In seconds like these—strings of seconds that seemed sewn together, tethered easily
with light—everything glowed. Everything
flowed
. His feet floated down before him, instructing themselves, finding seamlessly the
empty space between the iced-over parts of snow that would crunch.
He was not thinking.
In seconds like these, he was pure
doing
.

He could smell the snow. He tasted and heard the cold. The car was sliding closer
to him, and as it did, behind his eyes, he saw them driving off in it.

“Michael!”
Patrick whispered uncertainly.

Michael flinched, ready to hiss at Patrick, but then everything inside him froze.

On the other side of the Volvo, Hammy was turning toward them.

Run!
But Michael ignored the panic. He threw himself down, Patrick still on his back.
His shoulder bucked against the side-rear bumper of the Volvo; snow from the bike
attached to the back fell down on them.

He could see the woman’s feet, under the car. Her fat legs were stomping in the snow.

His own legs burned and quivered underneath him.

The office was only maybe ten paces back, but it might as well have been in another
world. He’d be spotted if he tried to return.

Patrick looked panicked, and Michael understood that he had to hurry.

He crouched-crawled to the front passenger door. His hand gripped the handle, and
just as he tugged it, he thought:

Locked it. I locked it before we went in the office.

The Volvo’s alarm exploded the air around him. Michael’s legs softened. Bright spots
of shock popped in front of his eyes. He jammed his gloves into his mouth.

Patrick screamed into the glow of now-flashing hazard lights.

“Heeere!” Hammy shrieked.
“Oooooooh, they’re heeeeeeere!”

She began to run, but slid and stumbled as she made the transition from sidewalk to
road, slamming onto a knee. “Waahh-
hoooo
!” she wailed. Beyond her, in all directions, shadows neared: Bellows in the woods,
killers in the roads, wailing and approaching.

Patrick, his eyes white and afraid, said, “Michael?”

NOW! FEEL YOUR—

—blood, blood, hammering his heart—

And suddenly, suddenly Michael was calm!

He took Patrick’s hand into his own, knowing this: he would get the keys, or it would
be Game Over.

He got Patrick up, back across the sidewalk toward the office, shouldered the door,
into darkness, where he tripped over a can of paint, quickly regained footing—to the
desk, to their duffel bag beside it—kicking the paint can away and as the can burst
open and splashed red color, Michael tore open the bag and fanned apart the Pop-Tart
wrappers and there were his keys, there were his keys, winking, like they were happy
to see him too.

“Michael, what are we gonna do?”

“Go to the next level.”

Grabbing Patrick’s hand again, squirming bones in mitten,
yes-yes,
and out the window, quite calmly Michael saw shadows that were confused and shouting.
The people were twenty yards away, and jogging fast. But, ah, Gamers, that was the
thing: they were
jogging
, and Michael—beginning to smile—Michael was
dashing.

The car key went into the car lock like warmed oil.

In video games, in the cut scenes at the ends of missions, it was always this moment
that snagged the good guys by the ankle. In video games, it didn’t matter how perfectly
you played: you couldn’t go to the next level if the game didn’t want you to. Bad
guys could be gaining, and you do something stupid, like drop your key—but Michael’s
car door opened perfectly. He lifted Bub into the car, and Michael was about to enter
the car, too, to put the insane pursuers in his past. So he did not expect it when
there came a flash of yellow, and the Volvo’s windshield finally shattered inward.
And beside Michael’s ear, just as he was getting ready to sit, the headrest exploded.

Stuffing flew, white and singed.

Snow wheeled into the car through the place where the windshield had been. Ducked
down, stunned, his head on the driver’s seat but his knees on the ground outside the
open driver’s door, it took Michael several seconds to fully process what had happened.
His brain had been knocked, reeling, to the mat. And the
yes-yes
was gone.

“Patrick?” he made himself not scream.

Silence.

“Owwww,” said a voice.

His heart iced. “What, what’s wrong?”

“That was
so loud
.”

“I . . . I know. What a jerk, right?” Michael said. He tried to sound calm—didn’t
think he was a success.

Don’t Freak, please. Not now, Bub.

Michael spotted the keys. They’d fallen onto the passenger seat. They were just out
of reach—

A second shot exploded the remainder of the headrest.

A metallic
click
, in front of the car. “Come to me, boy.”

Michael cautiously raised his head, peering over the dashboard. The gunman-priest
stood ten feet from the hood, his long barrel aimed at Michael. He ejected his spent
shell, which disappeared in the snow, steaming.

He slid the cocking mechanism of his gun forward, chambering a new round.
He’s actually going to shoot us.

“Sir, wait, WAIT!”

Wind spun snow between them. The man didn’t say a thing. But his eyes were happy and
glittered in his face like beetles.

“Out, boy.”
His whisper carried as well as a boom.
“If you know what will please your soul:
out
.”

Not far from the forest’s edge, Bellows blew their dead calls. The last of the search
party—mostly older people who couldn’t run as fast—were arriving from the side streets.
They began forming a loose ring around the car.

Run, you die. Stay in the car, you die.

“Out.” The wild priest smiled.

“Me and my brother?” asked Michael.

“The child shall be last, thankee.”

What could Michael do but nod?

He pretended to struggle to get to his feet to buy himself half a second.
“Bub,”
he whispered.

“H-huh?”

I’m going to go outside now,
Michael thought,
to talk with the man with the gun. Don’t Freak. Please stay here. And if you hear
him shoot, don’t look.

“BRB. You just do one thing for me, okay?

“Don’t eat my Flintstone Vitamins, chump, or I swear I’ll punch your butt so hard
. . .”

There wasn’t even a giggle from the backseat. Michael stood. And now, more than any
other moment since The Game began, he had no idea what he was going to do.

He stepped away from the car and into the center of the unreal nether-zone Main Street.

The gunman-priest kept his weapon on Michael, ruddy face grinning tightly. His long
robes twisted and furled, somehow ghostly. His robe and his fingers were stained red.

Michael raised his hands up.
So what I’m gonna do is . . .
 That was a trick that worked, sometimes: starting a thought and letting it finish
itself.

But it didn’t work this time.

His stomach crawled. He was surrounded by the crowd that had happily witnessed murder
in the church. He half expected the crowd to swarm him, to carry him to the altar.

The crowd watched.

Michael took a step away from the car and nodded to the gunman-priest, who did not
nod back.

“Who are you, boy?”

“My name is Michael Faris, sir,” Michael replied carefully, “and I’m just looking
for—”

“‘Michael.’ Do you know who the real Michael is? ‘Michael’ is the archangel: God’s
warrior. But Michael Faris, you betray God.” The priest cocked his head. “Where do
you come from, Michael Faris?”

“The office. We slept there.”

“Play no games,” the priest said. “Before that, boy.”

“We . . . came from Route 82.” Michael motioned toward the edge of Coalmount with
his head.

“Before that,” said the priest.

“Before . . . ?”

“Beefooore!”
hissed the priest. His neck popped in cords. “Before before!”

Michael did not dare look away from the priest, but he swore that he could almost
feel Patrick’s reaction ping across the air to him, asking why a man in The Game was
so mean. Patrick, getting more and more scared . . .

From the woods:
“Beeee—fooo—beeeeeffooorrrreeee!”

Calm again, as if comforted by the roars, the priest said:

“Confess, child. In the night. You killed the Chosen.”

The crowd murmured agreement. Did they sound closer than before?

Michael’s groin filled with ice. “The what?”

“God’s Chosen, Michael Faris.”

“Well . . . I’m not exactly sure what you mean by ‘God’s Chosen.’”

But with blossoming dread, Michael thought he
did
know why Rulon called the Bellow he’d killed “the Chosen.”

The way the Bellow was bound to the altar in the church. The way other “God-Blessed”
Bellows were buried in front of the meeting hall: sealed and untouchable, as if they
were being protected.

They . . . oh God. Oh effing no. Do these people
worship
the Bellows?

“You think this is your victory, don’t you, child?” said the priest.

Michael blinked. “I . . . victory?”

“But you are the victor of nothing. You destroyed our First, but ohhh, more of the
Chosen pass through these hills around our town and come to us every day, don’t they?
Your friends may have tried to force us from our homes, but we’re back, now, aren’t
we? And you cannot keep us out of your shelter forever. This is not your victory,
no, child. Tell me: Why did the others send you?”

Michael stood stone-faced, refusing to betray his emotions. But something strong and
good roared in his chest.
There are others. Nearby. Others, who this a-hole hates.

Which means, probably, they’re awesome.

Others, as in the Safe Zone?

He didn’t know; doubted it, actually.

But he could not help but picture the ending he’d been fighting to reach since Halloween:
he pictured walking into the Safe Zone, holding Patrick’s hand. And he pictured Mom,
the little birthmark on her left cheek twitching, like it always did when she saw
him and was about to smile; he pictured her pride in him, her happiness.

Ringed by the crowd, the madman’s rifle zeroed over his heart, Michael mentally calculated
how long it would take to dive back into the car, find the keys, and plow an escape
through these lunatics.

Way too long.

Michael looked into the priest’s eyes. And what he saw inside them—the certainty and
fury—made him . . . calm.

You can’t outrun him. So outplay him.

Yeah, the Game Master never told you about fighting a psycho priest, but outplay him—just
do this one last thing—and maybe The Game can be over. Just like the Game Master promised.

Outplay him
how
?

Michael’s senses searched for his pulse. . . .

He opened his heart to the fear, and the danger beat through his veins,
enlivening him
, amplifying all instincts, the terror fusing all his focus down to a powerfully bright,
pulsing bead.

He looked into the man’s eyes and took the measure of his rage, and fear. He saw who
the priest was, behind that rifle, behind those eyes. Michael understood him.

Like Ron.

You outplay him like you do with Ron
,
how you always keep yourself—and Bub—safe whenever he’s around.

You lie.

And Michael smiled—
yes-yes—
the crazy exhilaration of knowing what to do outweighing any dread.