cheaters—I saw soldiers last night, I wanted to surprise you—they’re with the Game Master—maybe we’ll even get enough extra points and finish tonight.”
And how are you going to do that? Michael thought. How are you going to “meet the Game Master”?
Shut up! I’ll figure it out. I. Will. Eventually. Soon. Figure. That. Shit. Out.
“Are they close?” Patrick said, voice shaky.
“They’re super close, next door basically, it’ll just take a couple minutes, okay?”
Nothing. Quiet.
“Oka—?”
“. . . Is that a good-guy sign . . . ?” Patrick whispered.
Michael turned his head just in time to see the sign zip past: a sign shaped like a badge, attached to a metal pole.
That, he thought, is an interstate sign.
His entire brain exploded.
Three weeks.
Three weeks.
Three weeks.
Three weeks they’d traveled on the pitted back roads, searching for an interstate entrance. Three weeks in the gray nether-zones of his useless map. Three weeks in the mountains, and they’d only seen one entrance, and that on-ramp had been clustered with empty cars, with razor wire strung across the road.
The only thing on this on-ramp was moon-bright snow.
Breathe.
He turned onto the ramp.
Uuuuuuupppp, it felt like; uuuupppppp the incline of the ramp, the spectacular fantastic incredible on-ramp, yes-yes, zooming as if for a takeoff, gliding with it now.
Snow cometed into the car, but that was nothing, because he could look out and see the whole night in between those white streaks. He fit into the moment. The world slid into clarity around him. He struck a patch of black ice and instantly corrected the car’s shimmy with a flick of the wheel.
The maniacs chasing him didn’t understand: Michael was used to being chased. He’d been outmaneuvering danger a lot longer than just since October 31.
“Bub,” he said, smiling, “I need your help. I need you to be a shooter. I need you to be, basically, Buzz Lightyear.”
“Huh?” said Patrick.
Michael passed the flashlight and the orange toy gun he’d gotten from the office over his shoulder, just something to occupy Patrick until they got away.
“It’s your weapon, buddy. If you see any Bellows, zap ’em with the light.”
Patrick took his hand away from his mouth, hesitating. He gulped. “Can I be Woody instead?”
And Patrick, yes-yes, took the light and gun. And satisfaction and relief blossomed in Michael as Patrick stepped back, at least for a second, from the ledge inside himself that wanted to swallow him whole.
They reached the interstate’s even plain. Cars and big rigs clogged the two-lane, cast ascatter like spilled toys.
Creatures within the big rigs’ cargo hulls screamed.
Cargo hulls’ doors roared open to the new nightfall.
Michael did not breathe and his blood soared through him, and he seamlessly slalomed the Volvo through the just-wide-enough gaps between wrecks.
But you can’t outrun Rulon’s maniacs here, Michael saw—not thought, but imaged. Gun to heart or pedal to floor: that was how it always worked. A plan, fully formed, flashbulbed in his mind, and its brilliant light seemed to transform the world around him into something like a high-definition video-game screen shot, an impromptu tutorial, with arrows and highlights and clues indicating what path to take.
Too many cars, Michael saw.
So, you stop your car.
And hide from the maniacs, in the woods past the interstate guardrail. Climb up a tree and wait it out. Then come back to the interstate in the morning and follow the road to the Safe Zone. To Game Over.
And maybe even to Mom—
“Bub, how ’bout a bike ride?”
“Huh?” Patrick began, but Michael shouted, “Hold on to something!” and crushed the brake.
He did not know why. The yes-yes was telling him to, that was all.
The car screamed over the frozen concrete, and when it finally came to a stop, Michael understood.
His headlights revealed the bottom of a flipped eighteen-wheeler, perhaps ten yards ahead. A dozen Bellows crawled over the underparts, glistening like wasps. If he hadn’t braked, either the Bellows or the wreck would have ended him.
He wasn’t psychic, that wasn’t it. Just accustomed to the terrible. Very much so. Just ask Ron.
The remaining motorcyclists were still a half mile back, negotiating the traffic tangles. Michael hooked his .22 caliber over his shoulder and carried Patrick from the Volvo.
Michael unbungeed the mountain bike from the back of the car, Patrick still piggyback, then guided the bike through stalled cars toward the guardrail on the side of the interstate, taking out, with his rifle, two Bellows who followed from the eighteen-wheeler.
When they reached the guardrail, Michael put the car keys in his pocket, and something deep inside of him seemed