wind could lift her into the sky, and for no reason Michael could name, that idea made a moment of fear chill his chest. He had a frighteningly childlike urge to call out to her. Then she was raising her hand to her forehead, saluting them, pretending to be a soldier.
Michael turned without a salute back.
The captain led them into the shadow of the movie theater’s marquee: MAGIC LANTERN THEATER—HORROR-A-THON—GET UR TIX EARLY—SHOWS SELL OUT. As he kicked in the door, the smell of stale popcorn rippled out. Hank screamed when a body pitched out of the shadows, but it was just a cutout of Vin Diesel.
Michael looked into the dark. No, I am not that old “Michael” anymore. I explored places, just like we’re doing now, for twenty-three fugging days, before I met Jopek, Michael tried to reassure himself as he stepped into the theater.
An old movie theater lobby: dips of velvet rope, moldy pretzels and lumpy nacho sauce, fake coffins propped against the walls.
Captain Jopek’s face, floating in the dark, turned toward them.
“Stay sharp, ladies.” His breath was a ghost.
“This is Captain Horace Jopek of the United States Army! I am here on a search-and-rescue! If you’re alive, call out the first three letters of the alphabet!”
Now everyone felt for one another as they moved in past the last of the light, holding the shoulders of the person before them like a blind-man’s chain: Captain, Holly, Hank, then Patrick and Michael.
Captain Jopek, his gun light lancing like a glisten-sharp sword, looked like the point man of a covert team in Battlefield 3. “All right now, check your corners,” Jopek said, “staircase over there, Jopek, check it, clear, bet your ass it’s clear.”
His body moved with the precision of a machine. Every step was solid and certain of purpose and stealthy—but Michael did not feel any admiration for Jopek’s power right then. It seemed arrogant to him, and ugly.
Heading through a theater-room door, which was splattered with dried blood.
People were in their seats, Michael saw, when different villains shambled in. One scream. Popcorn arcs in the cut of movie light and the audience boils up with panic. Stampede for the too-small door. Panic when people begin to be bitten; panic, and in the half-light, it is not possible to tell who is good and who is not.
Cold wind uncoiled through the theater door, whickering dead leaves up the aisle. Patrick slipped a little; Michael did not look at him but gave his shoulders a reassuring squeeze.
“What’s under there?” Patrick whispered. “What’s under the leaves?”
Something weird, under the crackling leaf-carpet—soft, but with a gooey weight.
“Ho’, shit,” said the captain, as if seeing something up ahead. “Ho’ goddamn.”
“Captain,” said Hank. “What’s the situation?”
The captain swung the gun light up and speared the silver screen.
A shape seemed to shift beyond the movie screen.
“Captain,” Holly murmured to herself. “Should we be here?”
The captain was striding toward the screen now: fast and sure, until he skidded again, on something slick, the gun light a quick slice across the movie screen. And it was at that moment that fear began to rise in Michael like poison water rushing up a well, because there were other shadows behind the silver screen; they were growing, now they were more defined, like something drawing closer in a nightmare from the other side of the veil. Patrick grabbed Michael’s hip and said, “Look.” Down the aisle, the captain regained his footing and his weapon rose, and while Holly gasped in revelation and Hank began to holler, Patrick said, “Look! Michael, LOOK!” And, now, Michael did. In the reflected silvery half-light, it was hard to tell what Patrick held pinched between his thumb and index fingers.
But Michael looked closer.
And the thing dangling from Patrick’s fingers looked directly back at him.
It was an eye, a human eye, torn with the ropey rosy stalk still attached.
The movie screen. It bulged. Teeth and hands burst seams through it. And there in the vivid gun light were Bellows, two dozen Bellows, coming forth like three-dimensional demons breaking free from the scariest movie ever made.
Hank hollered. Holly cried out, stumbled back on a seat.
The captain only laughed and opened fire, filling the room with his perfect, video-game-hero’s fire, the gun bursts flashbulbing his perfect hero’s face.
Michael watched Holly, saw the relief on her face, the same that he himself had felt when the captain mowed Bellows from his balloon—
—but this is different! The captain isn’t just “saving us” right now! Michael thought. The captain isn’t