The End Games (25 page)

“He promised. And we’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Michael?”

“Yeah?”

“Ya-ya.”

“Ya-ya.”

So that was the first thing Michael did that day.

“Hank. My
man
,” he said, an hour later. Hank stood at a urinal in the bathroom.

“Faris,” said Hank coldly, “do you notice the piss I am taking?”

Michael nodded, raised his palms up:
my bad!

He leaned against a stall, sucked the strings of his hoodie, waited until the pee-sounds
stopped. Then said, “Man, the captain can shoot, but his handwriting sucks, right?”

Hank went for the sink. Their eyes met in the mirror. “Huh?”

“So the note he left
you
wasn’t messy, too?” Michael said.

The implications of the question settled on Hank’s face. He looked like a fangirl
who has asked for her favorite singer’s autograph and received a “maybe later, babe.”
Michael actually felt a twist of guilt, remembering what Holly had said about Hank
last night, but he couldn’t help but feel a
yes-yes
satisfaction that his lie was having the perfect effect.

“What did it . . . what did yours say?” said Hank.

“To talk to him, later, where he sleeps.”

“I don’t think that crazy asshole
ever
sleeps,” Hank replied, trying to sound like he wasn’t upset about Jopek’s “snub.”
“I heard, uh, Michelangelo never did, either,” he added.

“And the note didn’t even say where that
was
, which is super nice,” Michael said.

Hank raised his eyes, quickly, and Michael was suddenly afraid he’d overplayed his
hand.

Hank squinted for a long moment, then dropped his stare moodily. “Governor’s office,
Faris, if that’s what you’re here to ask me.” He left the bathroom, his broad shoulders
hunched so low that Michael felt sorry for him. Aaaaalmost.

Michael had been in some semi-exciting situations since Halloween.

But as he jogged past a headless governor and climbed the rotunda stairs, he decided
that the best had been Halloween night, before the first Bellow appeared across the
street from his house. In those seconds, there was only this: his brother, his plan,
and his total control.

That was the first time he had ever felt that way.

Except. Right. Fuggin’. Now.

The marble stairway, which curved wide and stately around the rotunda, overlooked
Government Plaza. A snowstorm was swishing against the windows. Fun weather to drive
in, if you could get the right car.

He became aware, as he neared the governor’s office at the end of the empty hallway,
of his heartbeat. Heavy and somehow thick, yes, but perfectly calm and even.

Michael mentally replayed what he was going to say if Jopek was there, then knocked
twice on the double doors, lightly. Ron’s voice echoed in his head:
You always want to knock on my door, Mikey. Because then I can come out. ’Cause this
is Ron’s den, and believe me when I say:
You
can’t come
in.

“But hey, Ron, if I did that, how would I have stolen the money to pay for, uh, running
away?”
Michael whispered.

He waited there a few seconds more, feeling that anticipation like waiting for a game
to load the next, last level. Then he opened the door.

Stormy half-light poured through the great plate of glass on the opposite wall.

Whatever Michael had expected a governor’s office to look like, this wasn’t it.

It wasn’t oval; it was about as big as his principal’s office; there
was
an American flag, and a West Virginian, but they lay tipped, crisscrossed, on the
floor. Maps spilled off a humble desk and across the carpet. He recognized a map of
Charleston: like Hank’s, almost all the streets had been
X
’d out in red.

There were no cots or couches in here, not even a rumple of blankets on the floor.
I guess he
doesn’t
sleep,
Michael thought, half-joking. But the thought made him uneasy.

Michael went to the governor’s desk and got his first surprise of the day. He had
expected—he wasn’t sure what. A struggle, anyway, before finding the extra keys.

CAPT. H. C. JOPEK
, he saw, stitched in fraying black thread on one end flap. The shoulder strap snaked
lazily over the top, which yawned wide, like an open mouth.

The captain’s canvas bag.

No, I don’t pray,
he thought.
But sometimes? My prayers come true, anyway.

Michael opened the flap, and heard, unmistakably, a muffled key-jangle somewhere inside
the bag.

He palmed aside a
Playboy
, and all at once, he became aware that he had left the door to the office open. He
suddenly imagined Captain Jopek hiding behind the door, crouched there like a dark
troll beneath the bridge of a castle, and now Michael’s palms broke sweat and he plunged
his hands deeper into the bag but he only found one old walkie-talkie, three maps,
no keys.
Don’t freak out,
he thought, but the keys weren’t in any of the side compartments, either, and Michael
thought,
Oh God, I just imagined the jangle.
He swallowed. Noticed a tiny, zipped pocket on the front of the bag. And when he
opened it and slid his hand inside, he finally did hear the sound of the keys, yes,
but another sound, too, not the keys and definitely not imaginary.

“Reckoned I’d find ya here.”

The light through the window seemed to go cold on his clothes.
Don’t spin,
Michael thought.
Don’t scream
.

“Hi!” he said, turning. There was a method to moments when you’ve been caught. You
didn’t want your smile to look too guilty and give away the extent of trickery. But
then again, looking
not
guilty, when you’re obviously off-limits, rang alarm bells, too.

“Got a secret, Mike,” Jopek said. The captain’s bright, excited face shone like a
searchlight. And for a horrifying second, Michael thought Jopek was questioning whether
he
had a secret.

“Don’t you got an itch for what it is?” the captain said.

Why isn’t he asking why I’m here?
Michael thought, but said, “Absolutely. What’s up, sir?”

“I was on the walkie this morning, tryin’ to raise up the units, out there in radio
land.” Jopek grinned at his wit. He walked closer, halved the distance between them.
“And do you know what, fella? There I am with my coffee like always, and this mornin
I
did
get a call. From some mountain folks who had tales to tell.”

Jopek’s smile crackled, so wide it looked as if his flesh could split.

“Mikey, c’mon, you know what I’m gonna say, ha-ha! I got in touch with the soldiers
you saw, boy!”

A round rim of his bike tire, flying over the edge of the world, had seemed to suck
free of gravity. The same feeling as now: cliff-fall vertigo.

Made it come true,
Michael thought wildly, his vision puckering dizzily at the edges.
I made it real.
He kept his smile, but he could not stop the blood from boiling to his cheeks.

“Yep, they’re ’bout thirty miles out, oughtta be here by tonight,” Jopek nodded. “Told
’em take their time: me and my troops will make sure the roads they need to get into
town don’t have any mines on ’em.”

Was the captain joking? Lying?

And then, arcing like a flare:
No! Telling the truth! Real unit, coming!

“I know we had our differences, buddy. Yesterday, I was pissed at you, I won’t lie.
But I’d sure be glad to have you come out to town with me today. I mean, just think,”
Jopek said sincerely, “your mama’s gonna be so happy to see you.”

And somehow, Jopek’s attempted emotional manipulation gave Michael a gift of focus;
a power-up, he thought. Calm washed over him again.

Here are two warriors, playing a game, and both are lying. I don’t know
why
you’re lying, Captain, but I know that you
are
. And actually, know what? I think I do know why. You know that
I’m
lying about the soldiers, don’t you? Maybe you’ve always known. You want to make
me feel safe, want to make me feel like help is coming, so I’ll trust you . . . and
then you’ll make an excuse. “Oh, the soldiers changed their minds, sorry.” “Oh, let’s
keep camp here, like I was sayin’. Those monsters and those Rapture ain’t nothin’
that ol’ Jopek can’t handle.”

“Sir? I couldn’t find—” someone said.

Jopek swiveled toward the door. Holly had been entering hurriedly when she stopped
short. Her eyebrows flicked up, surprised to see Michael.

“Well, here he is. And good timin’. This storm’s really kickin’ things up. If we’re
gonna get goin’ . . .”

Jopek shrugged:
then we better
.

Captain Jopek was leaving the room, already drawing his key ring from his belt. Finally,
Holly looked at Michael, and though it was dangerous,
because
it was dangerous, before Jopek even sailed out the doorway, Michael reached into
his own pocket, grabbed the keys he’d stuffed there, and held them up for Holly to
see.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

But she didn’t smile.

She wouldn’t even look at him. Not when they corralled Patrick at the rotunda, not
when Jopek asked Hank to stay behind and be watchman in case the Rapture returned,
not when Hank looked outright depressed that Jopek was taking Michael along instead
of him.

Not even when they went outside to the rear Capitol steps, and everything got so weird.

“What the!” Patrick said—
shouted
, actually. He had to, it was so loud out here.

Past the Abraham Lincoln statue and the deflated balloon tethered to it, two hundred
eyeless Bellows roared in the falling snow and pushed en masse against the security
fences that ran on both sides of the Hummer. Last night, Jopek had relocked the fence
systems on the bridge after the Rapture’s invasion; Michael had seen only a couple
dozen Bellows on Government Plaza afterward. But somehow the monsters had found a
way across the downtown bridge, and they penetrated every layer of the security barriers,
except for one final double layer of chain link. He saw, with whooshing relief, that
the Hummer’s escape path through the fence system was still intact. But the final
layer of fencing was bulging dangerously with the force of the Bellows, and Michael
could hear more Bellows on Government Plaza around the corner of the Capitol—“more”
as in “freaking hundreds.”

“Them tricky bastards started comin’ in from the river last night!” Jopek said. He
looked almost excited, like this was a fun, new challenge.

Michael looked at the enormous Kanawha River, past the Hummer and the fence. The river
had seemed like peace itself last night. Now Bellows were churning past in the current,
sinking and then surfacing downstream, screaming white jets of water into the air.
And by luck or something worse, some Bellows
were
ending up on the shore,
were
shuffling toward the fences, as if trying to gain the Capitol.

Michael pictured the fences popping like over-tight wire.
We have to get out of here. Like
now.

Jopek, whistling, strolled down the marble steps toward the Hummer, walking needlessly
close to the rotting hands shooting through the fences. A Bellow with a LeBron James–caliber
reach swiped at him, smearing green goo on the captain’s right shoulder. “Open wide,
honey,” he said, and—without looking—unstrapped his ankle pistol and shot off the
Bellow’s jaw.

Michael called to Jopek, “Captain, why can’t the soldiers clear the roads themselves?”

Jopek put the pistol in his belt, cocked a hand behind his ear, grinned, “What’s that?
Couldn’t hear ya.”

“Is it really safe, Michael?” Patrick said over the din. “It’s really how to win?”

“’Course it is, Bub!” Jopek shouted, apparently hearing just fine now. “C’mon, now,
buddy—let’s get
The Game
started!”

The blood pulled out of Michael’s face. He felt his windpipe close to the size of
a pinhole.

How the hell does
Jopek
know about The Game?

Hearing the captain speak the term Michael had created to protect Patrick—created
to protect Patrick from monsters, and from people just like Jopek—felt like a violation.

“Okay!” Patrick called brightly, relief in his brother’s voice. Relief, Michael thought,
because
someone else
told him that he was safe.

As Patrick practically skipped to the Hummer, Michael glanced to Holly. She had bluish
circles under her eyes—as if she’d stayed up late last night, talking to someone after
she and Michael had parted.

“Holly,”
he whispered,
“did you tell Jopek about—”

She walked away, down the steps, got into the rear of the Hummer.

Michael, seeing no choice now that Patrick was excited, followed. But when he boarded
the Hummer, he saw Patrick crawling through the sliding slot, to the front seat.

“Hey, Bubbo, what’re you—”

Jopek loaded into the driver’s seat and looked back at Michael. “Thought it might
be neat for him to ride up front. I’ll make him buckle up—standard Game procedure,
right, ha-ha?”

Patrick grinned at Michael.

Jopek snapped the sliding plate closed before Michael could say anything.

Outside, the sunlight pulled free through the storm for one split second. Bellows
moaned, as if in approval.

What. The hell. Is going on?

“Holly, why did you tell Jopek about The Game?”
Michael whispered as he strapped himself into the harness across from her. He felt
as if Holly had somehow handed Jopek a weapon. Maybe that was just paranoia. But that
was only part of the reason that he felt so stung.
Holly, I
trusted
you,
he thought.