he lock-picked with his multi-tool, opened, slammed, bolted, chained. By the Coleman lantern’s flat green light, they ate a dinner of dusty-tasting nut bars. Michael laid out their new sleeping bags in the west of the office, tucking his brother in while the moon rose, and that moment of beauty had eased Patrick, so after only one Atipax he clicked to sleep so instantly it made Michael almost laugh, both happy and sad. Day twenty-two, Michael thought. They’d sledded, explored a ghost town, foraged, and Patrick was sleepin’ easy in Southern West Virginia Coal and Natural Gas’s office, ’cause all in all, in this weird Game world they now lived in, yeah, that was pretty much your average day.
CHAPTER FOUR
All right, Game Master, when you gonna show up?
There was this fantasy Michael had, which went like this: go to bed before midnight. Not fancy, nah, but when your muscles itched from a night of driving and a day of snow walking, man oh man, did it sound sexy. How many days without once sleeping through the night? How many hours waiting, exhausted, for their Game Instructions?
Twenty-two days, plus one day, equals I wanna sleeeeeep.
Michael sat in a folding chair with an uneven metal seat, purposely ignoring the comfortable leather chair behind the desk. He sipped the last of the Mountain Dew Code Red they’d had with them when The Game began, idly tapping the .22-caliber rifle on his lap, watching a ribbon of world through the planks of wood on the window.
A snowstorm had moved in since they’d arrived at the office. Occasional shrouded flares of lightning; thunder in the hills. The falling snow largely veiled his view. Michael wouldn’t have wanted to try to spot flashlights or lanterns in the mountains tonight, anyway—not after he’d gotten his hopes up that there were people here who could lead them to the Zone. ’Cause sometimes, looking at the mountains, if you weren’t careful, you could feel all the dark miles that lay between the place you were and the place you wanted to be. You could feel like a radar blip, marooned in the nether-zone of all those miles that weren’t on the West Virginia map. You could feel like The End of The Game wouldn’t ever really come.
You can feel, his brain hissed now, like maybe the Game Master doesn’t know what he’s talking about—
Man. No. Don’t even think that.
A young Asian boy wearing shredded tuxedo pajamas, his cheek-skin gone, staggered past the end of the alley Michael could see down. Then the snow sealed up the view again. Bellows lurched aimlessly in the roads, like dumb undead drones without a queen, but it was still only the dozen or so Bellows he’d heard earlier. Better than last night. So there’s that.
But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to be sharp. You still have to feel your blood. Because if you don’t, you’ll think too much; you’ll get your hopes up. Like today, how you thought you were going to get yourself and Patrick to soldiers. And to the Safe Zone.
And to Mom.
Michael stood up, roughing his hands through his hair, blowing air out over his lips, trying to push down his frustration. Somewhere out in the snowing night came a whipcrack of lightning, not much more than a flashbulb, but it fleetingly silhouetted the shapes of two Bellows moaning past. And here was the thing Michael couldn’t help but think: the Bellows were the ones remaking the world in their own images. The Game Master, not so much.
That can’t be true, though, he tried to reason. Okay, yeah yeah yeah, things were frustrating now. But, true or false: the Game Master had brought them this far—safely. True. True or false: the Game Master had materialized in the dark of the night just before Halloween, and told Michael where to go, told him how to save Patrick. True. And the Game Master had told him how the Bellows were not as fast as he was, how the monsters were only mindless pawns scattered in the night. The Game Master had told Michael that he was going to gain the Safe Zone and finally find a place for Patrick to sleep that didn’t have screams or need locked doors. The Game Master had given them The Game, which was a joy, and a miracle . . . and . . . and . . .
And God, but I’m just so freaking tired.
Those Bellows last night in the woods, though, Michael .