Michael thought, like a pileup of silver Red Cross trailers, which he insisted on exploring compartment by compartment, not satisfied with simply shouting into them. But mostly the afternoon passed with a pleasant rhythm of driving, finding, and talking.
Michael was relieved that he didn’t feel “normal”—that he didn’t feel like the person he’d been before Halloween, as he’d feared he would after his brief stare down with Hank. He’d had a fantasy, as a kid, about going to summer camp, someplace where nobody knew who he was, where he could reassemble himself and become something other than The Poor Kid or The Skinny Kid. It had only taken the rising of the dead to make this an affordable option for the Faris family, ha-ha-ha, but this afternoon trip through the “paused world” really was the closest he’d ever come to it. Michael told everyone his story of the Rapture confrontation. Holly ooohed, which he pretended, all cool-guy, not to notice. Hank actually “bumped knucks” with him. (“Respect,” Hank said.) It wasn’t the attention that felt good, exactly. It was: Michael could see the pieces of him adding up in their eyes. He’d thought that up a long time ago, how people are really just puzzles, this final image that was composed of all the different moments and pieces of them that you’ve seen. Most people didn’t seem to realize that you were a puzzle, too: if you were careful enough, you could choose the image other people put together. Holly and Bobbie and Hank saw the post-Halloween him, and it made that (kick-ass) him seem real to Michael himself, in a way that felt almost dizzyingly wonderful. And as much as he loved Bub, he had to admit that it was nice to be seen as something other than an (admittedly awesome) older brother.
The only thing that could have made it better, Michael thought, was if he could see the captain’s expression beyond that sliding plate. He hoped the captain was smiling at his story, astonished and impressed by the new kid in town, and saying under his breath, “No shit . . .”
By the time they found the third ammo cache of the day—in a sniper post beside a McDonald’s PlayPlace—the sky was burning with the pale fire of late afternoon.
“Goddamn, this light leaves fast,” the captain said, his back to Michael. “Just a couple more stops.”
Michael checked out the sky, too. “I don’t know. Maybe we better call it a day, though?” he asked.
The captain didn’t turn, but Michael saw his shoulders tense. Is he angry?
Bobbie seemed to notice. She put in, kind of quickly, “Yes, that sounds about right to me.”
When the captain looked to them, his face seemed affable enough. Imagined it. “All right, Old Bones, let’s get you to bed,” he said. Bobbie laughed politely. “Why these walkin’, talkin’ dead targets only come out to party in the nighttime, though, I’ll never know.”
“Pssh,” Hank went, like he was a 24/7 party animal.
“It’s their pupils. When you die, they stop closing in response to the light,” Michael offered.
Holly looked impressed.
“Respect to the scientist!” said the captain.
“Where’d you learn that?” asked Hank.
I watch entirely too much NCIS, Michael thought. “I read, tons,” he replied, shrugging.
As they filed through the gate to exit the kids’ playground, Michael wound up walking near the rear of the pack with Captain Jopek. Everyone loaded into the Hummer, but when Michael looked back he noticed that the captain had paused a few feet away. He was gazing at something. Michael tried to figure out what it was by snapshotting the world. The footprints in the snow. The city in suspended animation around them. But the captain’s gaze was oddly far away—as if he were watching something beyond the scope of Michael’s sight. “Well, that’s the secret, ain’t it?” he murmured.
“The secret?” Michael said.
“The way to enjoy this world. Figure out a way to live forever.” He looked at Michael, winked. “Know what I mean?”
Uh, no. “Sure,” Michael said.
But he wasn’t going to let one odd moment spoil the afternoon. In the last glow of his first Safe Zone sunset, Michael leaned against the warmth and shape of the thought that there was, at last, another controller of the world. And in the rocking carriage of his Hummer seat, he found himself pleasantly dozing. For something warm was spreading out from his ribs that took him nearly the entire trip back to the Capitol, even with all its stops to open the barricade