Bub’s weapon upward half an inch at the last moment. He did not even know why; it was simply as if something were directing his hand as much as he guided his brother’s.
Patrick’s finger tensed, and he roared with the biggest voice Michael had ever heard him use:
“REACH FER THE SKYYYYYYY!”
And Patrick pulled the trigger of his flare gun.
A cry of light; a sparkler scream.
A fiery red contrail blazed forth from the barrel. The flare gun launched its glittering charge across the West Virginia night, a fizzing, dazzling, screeching light, like the racing sparks of a fuse strung across the world. Yes, like the fuse of some unimaginable bomb.
The flare struck Cady Gibson.
There was a sudden floating fire-rose on the dead boy’s chest, like a hideous fake, where a heart would be.
That was when the mountain blew up.
“OH SHI—” Patrick screamed as the first flame pyred out of the mine.
Michael grabbed at Bub and Holly, and threw them both down to the floor of the basket as it happened. He had been wrong about the “toy” gun, but Holly had been right about the gas: it was there, packed within all the subterranean nooks and catacombs of the mine, like patient, invisible dynamite. And as the flare ignited it, there was a tide of fire that even the monsters could not outrun.
Roaring yellow-red light filled the world, making Michael blind and deaf. In the storm of heat, he found Patrick and Holly and hugged them to him, to let them know that he was there. And they hugged him back, to let him know that they were, too.
AFTER THE END . . .
After their balloon had hurled and pitched in the sky like a bouy in a hurricane; after the earth-tearing chain of explosions stopped; after the light and heat began to fade; after Michael and Holly sat up, stunned silent but asking Did we just . . . save the . . . ?
After Patrick gaped at the flare gun in his hand like a kid blinking at the fist that has finally fought back against the bully, but also somehow accidentally killed him . . .
After Patrick burst into tears that Michael and Holly could do nothing to stop . . .
After the wind carried them into the night, and the flame-filled quarry began to look no larger than embers. After Patrick finally, simply exhausted himself and fell into an uneasy sleep. After Michael and Holly rigged the burner-handle down with a rope from the canvas bag labeled CAPTAIN H. C. JOPEK, which Holly had grabbed from the back of the Hummer (the bag had safety flares, tourniquets, a blanket, radio, “space food,” batteries, and a Playboy magazine, which Holly rolled her eyes at and flung out of the basket). After they asked each other, Did we just end this? I mean, is that possible—if all the Shrieks came home, did we just kill them all? Holly said she didn’t know, that she really doubted it. But Michael saw the hope in her eyes. He recognized it, from what he almost felt in his own heart.
Maybe all the Shrieks did die, though, Holly said. I mean, since Cady was the thing that changed them into Shrieks, right? So maybe the only Things left are . . . like, Bellows that are scattered and by themselves.
She added: ’Cause it couldn’t have been all of them, right?
Right?
After the moon rose and the storm calmed and they drifted through a star-shot sky, wondering at the world that was slipping by in the smooth—silent?—darkness far below their feet:
Holly told Michael they should sleep in shifts. Michael tried to say he couldn’t sleep, and for a while he couldn’t; it was too quiet up here. So he turned on the army radio Holly had brought, and the white noise at least relaxed him. And he did sleep. And, same as always, dreamed of Mom.
It was Christmas morning, and thick, white flakes were falling past his window in a lightly moaning wind. He could smell pine, and the cookies (lemon) Mom had left for Rudolph. As he leapt from bed, he was aware of the cold on his ankles at the ends of his too-short pajamas. Mom stood at the bottom of the stairs. Her hair was drawn down in front of her face, and Michael had a terrible feeling that if she looked up, she wasn’t going to have any eyes.
On the bottom stair, between her feet, lay a gift topped by a