slabs of his forearms; his nostrils were cavernous and black. And despite the cold, a kind of heat seemed to bake from his skin. A jutted brow shadowed his eyes—they were dark double zeroes—but the remaining pieces of his expression were full of the good humor of a man who has just come across a secret.
“Our bike,” said Michael. Patrick helpfully pointed over the cliff, grinning.
“Just the two of ya?” the captain asked. “No soldiers with you?”
Uhh. “No,” Michael replied.
“Well, ain’t that a reg’lar West Virginia miracle,” said the captain, and winked at Michael. His breath was thick with sickly sweet tobacco.
“Whelp, I guess it’s time to hit the sky,” the captain said. “More of them bike loonies will be back soon, believe me.” He patted the rim of the basket good-naturedly. Michael became aware of the sounds of more Bellows in the woods.
God, The Game worked. I made it real. He reached for Captain Jopek’s hands.
“The brat first,” said the captain.
Michael hesitated a second.
In the end, it wasn’t entirely his choice: Patrick slinked from behind his leg when he realized they were going to fly. The man quickly lifted Patrick up and set him on the floor of the basket. Michael felt a momentary, surprisingly brilliant pang of separation as his brother disappeared from view under the lip of the basket.
Without hesitation, Captain Jopek turned to extend his hands to Michael. This is real. It’s really over—
But the captain’s expression froze him. “What happened there?” the captain said, an odd and cold and calm smile on his face.
What happened where? Michael was going to ask—but his fingers found the same place the soldier’s eyes had. His neck. Blood there. The tumble from the bike must have torn open the scratch he’d gotten last night. “Oh, crap, you know what?” Michael said, half laughing. “There was one of those monsters, in a miner’s outfit—”
In a sleek blur of movement, the cold eye of the assault rifle’s barrel raised on Michael. Michael recoiled, almost falling in the snow. “Jeezus!” Despite his panic, he fought to still sound respectful. “I’m not infected, sir! It’s a scratch.”
“Scratch,” the man said.
Michael nodded.
Patrick sensed the tension, tried to chuckle, hummed.
The gun went down, the soldier’s gaze came up, and for the first time Michael saw his eyes.
What happened next could have been a trick of light, a quirk of exhaustion.
The sparks of moonlight in the captain’s eyes seemed to fly to the pupils and vanish. Michael realized: there was nothing to read in Jopek’s eyes.
And Michael was beginning to reach for Patrick, because something wasn’t right, he was always able to read people—but some black object was coming at him: the stock of the captain’s automatic rifle, looping up and up, flying almost like his great balloon. Michael heard an explosive hollow thwok, and the last thing he saw were Patrick’s fingers, his brother’s fingers, reaching out for his.
CHAPTER TEN
The winter winds, which seemed to snarl in the alley beside their apartment before gathering strength and pouncing out, were growing colder. The night was like a thing you could reach out and snap. It didn’t even matter if you were inside.
Michael shifted on his quilts on the living room floor, looking up at his mother’s face. See, Michael baby, she said, her smile floating above him, like a warm moon, it’s like a adventure thing. She palmed the quilts flatter and fit his mittens on his fingers. You remember Indiana Jones? Wasn’t that movie fun? That’s what this is just like, baby.
He’d heard Mom on the phone with the gas company earlier asking how could they have the heart in the middle of February, but it never occurred to him that the call and the adventure had thing one in common.
All he knew was when she smiled at him, like they had a secret, he couldn’t imagine ever feeling cold again.
He whispered to her: Really?
Very really, baby, she said. Yes, yes.
They lay down, curled against each other, beside the crackling fireplace. He kept humming the theme from Indiana Jones, only quitting when Mom stopped helping because she had fallen asleep. The winds were really bellowing now: the front door began sounding like a barrier against the boogeyman. But he wasn’t scared.
He was an adventurer.
He loved Mom’s tiny, dreaming breath on his cheek.
For a while, Michael watched the snow streak past the window like a billion falling stars. He wondered if it was cold in outer space. He didn’t think so: in his mind, it was