head, screams. Patrick says something, who knows what.
“It’s going to be okay. I know what I’m doing,” Michael shouts now.
“Say ‘See you later,’ Bub,” says Michael.
And drives.
He clears the driveway and careens by Wally, who lies in a pool of black moonlit fluid. He speeds past Harry MacKenzie, who stumbles like an otherworldly pilgrim.
And when Michael sees Ron’s dashing form dwindling in the rearview mirror, he feels a joy so intense it’s almost blinding.
Michael has found a door, he believes: a door to the next world, to another life. Yes, he is seizing this mysterious catastrophe and barreling toward The End.
He does not understand that tonight the earth has been damned beyond his comprehension or control. He will not consider that he may have just murdered Mom. He doesn’t allow himself to think that, no, because he feels his blood now, feels good now, and the only thought he will allow is:
IT WILL BE WORTH IT,
IT WILL WORK OUT,
IN THE END.
So each yard he travels is like a wakening from a long nightmare, a wakening to control, a wakening at last to who he really is.
LOL, that’s a good joke, Mikey!
It is waking in the dark to the screams again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Michael?”
Mom.
“Michael,” Holly said loudly over Patrick’s crying, walking backward toward the tunnel, “it’s road time. What is wrong with you?” Michael shook his head. Patrick sobbed harder; Holly’s face clouded with urgency. “Dude, please. Jopek is dea—”
She paused, looking unsure whether she could do Patrick any more harm.
“He’s out-out. I think. But there’s something weird going on outside—are you even listening to me?”
“I never saved anyone. . . .” Michael said to himself.
“What?”
And I can take the cure, and I’ll still be alive. But everything that’s wrong inside and outside Bub will still be there, and all of this will just keep repeating, like it did with Mom. It will just keep echoing, like a Bellow.
This was The End, Michael suddenly knew.
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.