sir?”
“Like a secret, maybe.”
Michael’s stomach fell a little. “Hey, Bub,” he said, “I think I saw a 3DS out in the hall. Why don’t you go check it out?”
Concerned, Patrick asked with his expression, How come, though?
“Just for a sec,” Michael said. Patrick left.
“Why don’t we just go on and get it out, Michael?” the captain said. Michael nodded, but sill couldn’t help but hesitate. The captain spoke after the silence: “You’re on drugs, aren’t you, son?”
Michael blinked. “Sorry?”
The captain unbuttoned a chest pocket, on which CAPTAIN H. C. JOPEK was stitched. He pulled a rattling pill bottle out.
“This state’s got a problem with pills. And this ‘Atipax’ is serious stuff, judgin’ from all the warnings on the bottle.”
Michael tried not to show his relief that the captain had not asked about the soldiers. “O-oh, no, sir,” Michael said. “They’re Patrick’s.”
“What the hell’s the matter with him?”
Nothing is ‘the matter with him,’ Michael thought defensively. It’s everything around him.
“He just gets overwhelmed sometimes. They help take the edge off at night.”
“‘Contact name: Molly Jean Faris’?” asked the captain, reading the label.
Michael flinched, hearing her name aloud. “My mom.”
“And where’s she?”
“We haven’t seen her since Halloween. We . . . got separated.”
The captain raised his gaze on Michael—and he did something that caught Michael totally off guard: the captain, this titanic Safe Zone guardian, put his hand on Michael’s shoulder, and made a face of sympathy and respect. “Well, I think you done one helluva job getting that little boy and yourself to my zone. Give you a medal, if I could, soldier.”
Michael still could not quite read the captain, but in that moment, it didn’t matter. He wanted to tell the captain, “Thank you so much for saying that,” but he didn’t trust his voice to not catch on the lump in his throat. He nodded wordlessly, and the captain handed him the pill bottle.
“I gotta ask, though, buddy: What you do to make those Rapture boys so mad?” said the captain, walking toward the exit, Michael following.
“I killed one of their favorite ‘Zeds,’” Michael said.
“No shit!”
Michael grinned. He felt like a nerd who has just made the hottest girl at school laugh. “They called it their ‘First.’”
“Those loonies blew their lids when we were shooting the Zeds during the mandatory evac,” said the captain. “They even captured two of my soldiers, shot ’em in the head, and fed ’em to the Zeds. ‘A holy sacrifice,’ they said, and I ain’t kidding you.
“That priest thinks he can save the whole world, protecting the Zeds, worshippin’ ’em 24/7. When we started runnin’ his people out of that town, he even set up mannequins in his church, so it was like they were ‘worshipping’ the Zeds, while old Rulon couldn’t be around. He thinks this is the end times, and that the Zeds are the people God chose to raise from the grave so he can take them to Heaven. Rulon’s got that town screaming with Zeds, locked up and ‘protected’ everywhere. And here’s how shithouse crazy he is: if one of his people gets bit, Rulon takes off their heads before they can rise. Says they don’t deserve to become a Zed. Says he’s helping his people atone for all their sins, and if he don’t keep on doing it, God will leave them and everyone else behind. I’ve got land mines on most roads into Charleston, but the Rapture’s tried a couple times to get past ’em and into my city, to get more ‘sacrifices,’ I guess. Keep tryin’, I say, I’ll grab some popcorn.”
Michael laughed. Jopek had a kind of good-ol’-boy humor that was foreign to him, and a little intimidating, but also somehow exhilarating.
“Gotta admit, though, I’d love to meet that priest in a dark alley. I’ve got two words for him, and they ain’t happy birthday. Anyhow, I don’t think we’ll be meetin’ them today, not where we’re headed.”
“Headed?”
“Downtown. Big, big city, soldier. It’s been abandoned a week, and we want to be for-certain there’s no-livin’-body out there.”
“I—” Michael stopped walking. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, sir. I just mean, my brother’s been through a lot.”
“Aw shoot, I’ll get ya home by curfew. C’mon, Top Gun, we got a whole city waitin’ for ya.”
His hand reached out and grabbed Michael’s bicep, squeezing gently, man-to-man.
“Be all you can be, right?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The six of them, last-known Armageddon survivors in the Charleston city limits, walked down the stone steps with their shadows out in front of them.
At