“Move! Out of the way! I’ll cut the tires, let me cut —”
And a gun crack split the dusk.
Michael’s rearview mirror ripped free and flipped onto the passenger seat. He spasmed, trapping his scream in his mouth. Rulon was reloading, perhaps twenty yards in front of them, but there was something more dangerous already inside the car: the tears brimming in his brother’s eyes.
Patrick was hiding in the footwell behind the passenger seat. No: no, he was cowering in it. He clutched his Ultraman, trying to look tough, but Michael saw the truth. The way Bub panted, thin and ragged. The way he rhythmically bit his lip, hard enough to split the skin and bring a bead of blood. The way his eyes were going blank, like a void, like a TV screen the second after the power goes out, like he was tumbling down a long dark hole in himself, a hole that had opened when the world as he understood it cracked wide open under his feet.
Patrick was trying not to Freak.
Why why why? Was he upset because of the gunshots and the crazy people, or because he had heard that the “Game Master” on the phone was only a recording of his brother’s voice? Did he know that Michael had invented The Game, had lied every moment of every day and night since Halloween? Did he know that the only reason The Game existed was to keep him away from that ledge inside himself?
“Bub . . . ’sup?”
Patrick’s gaze widened and snapped over Michael’s shoulder. Michael looked and saw a man dashing from an alley to their right, raw lips pulled in a grin, pistol in hand. Michael gritted his teeth and heaved the wheel, speeding left, onto a road that shot off of Main Street, away from the man. They were leaving Coalmount, past the spot where Michael had checked it out with his binoculars, past the rusted sign that asked them to PLE SE COME AGA N! Gonna pass, thanks for the invite.
Michael reached the country route that had brought them to Coalmount yesterday, choosing the opposite direction from which they had arrived, hoping—oh, please—that it would take him to the Others Rulon feared.
“Michael . . . ?” Patrick said softly.
“Yo!” Michael said, his voice shaking.
“It’s wrong, it’s wrong.”
What’s wrong?! Another gunshot at their back. This one took the back right window, splashing glass.
Patrick cried, “Breakin’ the Rules is against the Rules! Other people are supposed to HELP US!”
And Michael slid in his seat as relief made him putty. Oh thank God, he didn’t hear. He doesn’t know. He’s just scared.
But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to Freak.
Because the only reason The Game keeps him from Freaking is that he thinks it’s all safe! He thinks the Bellows can’t really hurt you or him, that there are Rules—that you are his safe place, that you can always protect him.
And now, people were trying to hurt them, people were shattering the Rules, shattering the world.
And these people will make him Freak and disappear into himself—or they will just kill him—unless you get out of here, fast, very.
Patrick’s eyes screamed what Michael now asked himself:
What are you going to do?
Click went the headlights to life automatically, as the station wagon’s sensors registered nightfall. The Bellows had noticed, too: they sifted from the woods on either side of this rutted country route, screaming on the roadside like phantoms in an urban legend. Wouldn’t be long before they clogged the road.
Think. Think think think.
In the rearview mirror, Rulon’s maniacs were coming. They had boarded four-wheelers, motorcycles, dirt bikes. And their headlamps were gaining.
“Are they chasing us?” Patrick whined.
“What do you freaking think?” Michael snapped.
Patrick began chewing on his palm. Patrick’s voice, shamed and quavering, said, “You’re mad at me.”
Oh, good effing move.
Michael swerved, avoiding a child Bellow in a ballerina tutu. “No, I’m not.”
“Then why did you yell?” said Patrick.
“’Cause I’m excited.”
A heavy thud, and a smashing of a headlight’s glass. He’d hit a Bellow. Michael slowed for a split second, shocked. And the motorcycles gained.
“Michael, I want Mommy. I w-w-want her a l-l-l-little.”
No, Bub, you want her a lot, and you want her now. And guess what? I do, too. And now you’re going to start screaming, and I can’t give you a pill to calm you down right now, so this is what is called The End—
Michael, desperate, blurted: “Let’s go talk to the soldiers!”