Authors: T. Michael Martin
“Oh my God.”
He pawed his sleeping bag off, still whispering
“A million billion points for you.”
The Campbell’s soup can dropped out of Patrick’s hands, striking Michael’s left shin.
“Bub, be carefu—!”
But Michael stopped. Patrick could read Michael, yes, but the reading went both ways.
Patrick wasn’t screaming—was not giving any huge, obvious sign that things were wrong—but
his mouth was twitching.
He’s scared
.
He’s trying not to be, not in front of me
.
But he is
.
“What’s up?” Michael made himself smile.
Patrick’s small tongue came out and licked his chapped lips. “The people sound . . . mad.”
Michael stood up.
Mad,
he thought. Which meant . . . what?
Probably nothing
.
They’re just mad because . . . because they’re a search party, and they haven’t found
anybody in the coal towns yet. Like we haven’t.
But Michael heard a squeaking door open outside—the living human apparently entering
a nearby building—and as Michael looked out the window, he thought:
the person went into the church
. And he felt his stomach go cold.
The stained-glass windows of the church across the alley were mostly busted. When
Michael was two paces away from his own mostly boarded window, he caught his first
glimpse of the church’s interior: more shapes in the pews, shapes looking at something
at the front of the church.
The altar,
Michael thought. He froze.
And heard this scream:
“Do you know what God has asked me to do?”
Nearly magical lines of shock traveling up Michael’s arms; Patrick’s hand clamping
down on his; Michael, barely aware of it, spinning to a crouch, yanking Patrick closer
to him, hiding against the wall underneath the window.
The voice sounded again and Michael had to stuff his hand over Patrick’s mouth.
“DO YOU KNOW—”
“Please,” a female voice answered. “Rulon, I did not do this.”
Patrick’s eyes were big and bright with a question:
How does Michael feel about this?
Michael just half smiled and shrugged, like:
I know, little weird, right?
But he really thought, his pulse flying,
What the fug is going on?
Michael attempted to peek outside. For a moment, all he could see was the wet-warped
wood that planked the window. Then he craned up farther and saw across the alley to
the church.
The mannequins still stood among the pews, yes, but they’d been joined by perhaps
fifty people, standing and kneeling amidst them. Their faces were dust-slashed, solemn,
worn. Some had slightly yellowed skin. Their winter coats were ragged and bled out
dirty insulation. Most of the people were so viciously thin that they nearly vanished
even within the thin tatters. Two or three were obese; they wore only T-shirts, despite
the cold. One such man—kneeling in the pews, his thick combed-back hair as black as
coal— openly wept.
Michael’s gaze trailed up the aisle. At the altar, there stood a man in rubbish brown
robes, his back to Michael.
Priest,
he thought wildly.
In front of the priest, a blonde girl, no older than twenty, pretty in a malnourished
way, was on her knees.
“Rulon,” she said, voice so heavy with a hill-country accent that it sounded almost
unreal, “please. I swear to you, I
didn’t touch it
. I protected it all day, in the basement.”
“Then how did he
die
, Mattie?” said the priest. He was speaking softly now, nearly whispering, but his
voice still carried. “How, when we protected him for so long? How, when we left you
alone only for a single day? Did one of our mannequins come to life, is that what
you believe?”
The girl—Mattie?—shook her head. “Someone . . . someone else . . .” she said.
“Yes, child. We found footprints in the grocer’s. We know this, Mattie. Go on.”
Grocery store. That’s
us
, me and Bub.
Michael suddenly became aware of him and his brother as two small people in the fragile
shell of the coal office.
“The other person, they must’ve come in last night . . .”
Me,
Michael thought again, and felt an almost dizzying gratitude for the last night’s
snowstorm, which must have filled in their other prints.
“Of course,” said the priest gently. “Never thought
you
woulda killed it, child. I s’pose you must be right: the killer must have come in
last night, when you brought it up to the altar, when it was late. . . .”
“Yes!” Mattie agreed relievedly. “They came in when I—”
“When you . . . ?”
“When I was asleep!” she finished enthusiastically.
Michael didn’t know what was going on, not exactly, but from the girl’s face he understood
everything he needed to know: Mattie looked like a girl who had been caught with her
hand in a cookie jar . . . and the cookie jar turned out to have jaws like a bear
trap.
“From the mouth of babes.” The priest—his back still to Michael—looked to the crowd
in the pews. Some smiled. Some frowned. But they all nodded in agreement.
“Oh, Mattie. No, your hand would never put harm upon any Chosen. Certainly not one
so special, so precious. Certainly not one that we trusted you to protect while we
were gone. I know you would not betray your God like that. Or betray
me
like that, Mattie.”
The girl’s forehead made a wrinkle-work of emotion, and for one moment, something
terrible shone in her eyes:
Hope.
“R-really?” she said.
“Of course,” said the priest. “But . . . you know, Mattie, God judges the sinner the
same as the one who fails to
stop
the sin. And, child?”
“Yes?”
“I do, too.”
And Michael knew what was going to happen even before it had begun.
The priest reached into his robes, and from its dirty tangles a hunter’s knife materialized.
The blade sang cleanly across Mattie’s throat, a bright silver slash trailed by a
spray of red.
Michael felt a sympathetic flash of heat across his own throat.
He can’t do that,
Michael thought desperately.
The girl’s limp body twisted to the floor.
Patrick’s mouth moved under Michael’s hand, as if to ask what was happening.
It’s—you can’t kill people,
Michael thought.
That’s against the Rules.
People
don’t hurt
people
in The Game!
But these people in the church didn’t seem to care. While the priest stood over the
body, a man came forward from the pews, his heavy boots clunking. He was the weeping
man with the coal-black hair, but he was the smiling man now. The priest said to him:
“We’ll feed her to them tonight. But this girl does not deserve resurrection. Cut
off her head first, please, Samuel.” And as Samuel scooped the girl’s body from the
floor—like it was his everyday job—Michael saw him mouth:
hallelujah.
The people were filing calmly down the aisle of the church, now, out the front door
to the street.
Patrick pushed Michael’s hand off his mouth, sucking air, coughing. Some distant part
of Michael understood that he should shush him, but the world grayed out momentarily
before his eyes.
What the hell just happened?
he thought.
Why did those people do that? Who the hell
are
they?
The Game Master had told them a lot of things.
You’re quick, and so you’re safe
, he’d said.
You’re not really lost, just on your way. And if you will only do what I tell you,
Michael, you will be saved, and you will save your brother
.
But: “
People
will hurt people”? “On the way to the Safe Zone, you’ll encounter lunatics who have
no interest in helping you”? Those were a couple that must’ve slipped the Game Master’s
mind.
“What happened? Do you wanna go to those people?” Patrick said.
“Shh a sec . . .”
“Yeahbut
whathapp
—”
Patrick, shut up! I’m trying to think; just
shut up
!
Michael whipped around to look at Patrick—and Patrick did more than just recoil at
Michael’s anger. Michael saw something in Patrick’s eyes: that going-far-away look.
OhGodno
. He’d seen that look before when Patrick got too confused or scared . . . and he’d
seen what happened to Patrick if nobody stopped it.
Michael snapped back into himself.
Whoever these freaking people are, don’t let Patrick know that you’re scared.
Michael licked his lips. “They’re just some bad guys,” he told Patrick. “It’s a surprise.”
“Huh?” said Patrick. “Another one? Like the woods?”
“Bigger one. Way, way bigger.”
“Did the Game Master tell
you
about it?” Patrick asked.
No, Bub. This, he definitely did not mention. I’m starting to think the Game Master
is kinda full of shit.
Michael said, “Yeah, of course he told me about it.” He forced a smile. It felt real,
almost, even to him.
Michael heard roars.
He twitched, nearly screaming back, then looked out the window. The alley led out
onto Main Street. The people from the hideous ceremony stood there: the strange priest
was speaking to them, waving his hands down one direction of the street and then another.
Beyond the priest and his followers, in the hills that towered just beyond the buildings
on the opposite side of the street, lay the edge of the forest. Which was bellowing.
Dusk-colored shadows were approaching from the deeps of the woods. Dozens of Bellows.
Because it was almost nightfall.
Twenty-two days plus one day equals you overslept you stupid asshole!
Hurry. Hurry and get out get out get out.
“Piggyback,”
Michael whispered.
“Michael?”
Patrick whispered in his ear as he clambered onto his back.
And sense-memory overpowered Michael. . . .
It’s Halloween.
Patrick rides piggyback, his hands clasped together just above Michael’s heart. They
stand in the hallway to the garage; on their right is the bathroom with the busted
toilet. Patrick’s whispered “Michael?” is warm in his ear. Michael cocks his head
and puts a finger to his lips.
He presses a hand against the hinges of the door to the garage to stop its double
squeak. And once the door is shut behind them, he nods for Patrick to go on.
“How do you know about The Game?” Patrick whispers.
“Like I said, buddy: the Game Master told me. He told me how we can win.”
Michael goes his rehearsed eight and a half steps across the dark to a mound of old
clothes in the corner. A waft of perfume from a ragged scarf. He pushes down his ache.
Underneath the clothes lie Michael’s backpack and a duffel bag, both filled with enough
food to last through The Game they’ll be playing for the next couple days.
He gives the backpack to Patrick, tells him holding it counts for five points.
“How
do
you win?” Patrick asks.
“You get points. But they’re not as important. What’s important is that you outrun
the bad guys; what’s important is where you get to in the end.”
“Where are we going to?”
Away from here, Bub. This Game is going to take us away,
Michael thinks.
And opens the side garage door to the jack-o’-lantern night, not knowing what is about
to change, not knowing that The Game and its bad guys will be different than he had
anticipated, not knowing that when he goes outside, he will see his neighbor being
eaten.
“Michael what’re we gonna do?”
Patrick whispered now—not in their garage in Bridgeview, West Virginia, but in a
boarded office in good ol’ “Almost Heaven” coal country.
“Stealth Mode,”
Michael made himself whisper.
One: get out of here.
Two: fast.
Three: stop thinking, and feel your blood.
One: get out. Two: fast. Three . . .
Hunched, Patrick’s legs tucked under his elbows, Michael moved away from the alley
window. He could not concentrate, because his thoughts were flinging through him—
—How did this happen? Why were the people so mad that the Bellow had been killed?
Why?
Michael shrugged Patrick higher up, looking around the room for their possessions.
Duffel bag? Not important, leave it, no time. Rifle? Rifle? Where is the— There, behind
the desk, go.
And how are you going to “
go”
if your car is outside with all those people?
“But they’re not
supposed
to be bad,” Patrick said.
“Which is what makes it a surprise.”
Something sharp caught Michael’s pants. Just the side of the desk. But he’d nearly
screamed.
Be quiet, Bub.
Because Michael had to think—no
,
no he had to
not think
—he had to
not think
and get them out of here, because if he didn’t—
Because: if Patrick gets too scared, if Patrick
Freaks
again, Atipax pills won’t be enough, will they, Mikey?
They went to the front door.
As Michael looked through a half-boarded window beside the door, the priest was finishing
his talk. The snow had a strange muffling effect on the wild man’s words, but every
few traveled: “boot prints . . . small . . . chosen . . . find . . .” Their shadows
growing darker in the bluish snow, the priest led the group out of sight, back into
the church.