“Michael—” said Holly, her voice quaking and teary, “do you need help?”
Michael ignored her, slamming the roller-coaster safety-bars down on Bobbie’s shoulders, incapacitating her at least for the moment.
“Bobbie. Bobbie.”
He smelled her breath: stale and old.
In the dueling blacks and whites of her eyes was a slowly dawning recognition.
“Are you there?” he heard himself say, from far away.
There was a sniffle behind Michael. From the floor, his chin trembling, Patrick asked Bobbie, “How come you’re being mean?”
Bobbie blinked.
Her eyes went normal-white again.
She touched her face.
And burst into tears.
And then the captain was stopping the car at the statue of Abraham Lincoln, opening the rear door.
He didn’t holler or rage. He only gently motioned everyone to step out to the fenced-in rear promenade of the Capitol, like a slightly tired crossing guard. “Bobbie, girl, you come on out now. And I mean nice and slow.”
Michael felt himself step down out of the car. “Captain, can’t we wait?” Michael said. “Do you have to do this?”
The captain just nodded.
Michael felt the pain and terror from Bobbie and Hank and Holly, circling in the air over their heads. He felt Patrick’s confusion. He was even vaguely aware of everyone, himself included, following the captain’s orders to go into the Capitol. At the top of the great stone steps, Hank opened the double doors. Patrick, still sniffling, whimpered, “Michael . . . what’s he gonna do? Michael, w-what happens if a Bellow bites you?”
Holly took Patrick’s small hand with her big one. Michael looked at her with an almost painful gratitude. She was silent, though, and didn’t look back as she guided Patrick inside the Capitol.
Michael didn’t follow. From the top of the stairs, he looked back down to the captain and Bobbie, beside the camouflage Hummer. Michael noted numbly that the buffer-zone gates in the barrier fences were all open, even though the captain had never stopped, tonight, to unlock them.
Bobbie was clutching her stomach.
Suddenly, she bent over from the waist, dry retching.
The dark sky with its scud of stars seemed low, suffocatingly low.
“When’d you get bit, girl?” asked the captain.
Bobbie retched once more. As she leaned back up, her gaze flicked to Michael. She looked back at Captain Jopek.
“On top of the car,” she rasped, her voice hoarse and weak. “While you were inside.”
Why is she lying?
She doesn’t want Jopek to be mad. She’s protecting me.
But you couldn’t protect her. . . .
“Why do you ask?” Bobbie said to the captain. And the same expression came across Bobbie’s face that had come across Patrick’s earlier: hope. Was it always so hard to look at?
“Captain,” she went on, “do you think I might be all right? Do you think the soldiers can reach us and help, somehow—”
The captain didn’t answer. It was unclear what he was doing, pacing calmly away from her, boots clocking. Then he seized two handfuls of the chain-link fence.
He tugged, and the section of fence ran along its tracks, shutting in front of Bobbie’s face, locking her out. Far beyond her, from the other side of the downtown bridge, figures in the dark steadily approached and steadily moaned.
“Ain’t nothin’ nobody can do,” said the captain. He cocked his pistol. “Shit. Damn, Bobbie Lou, what a mess. I swear to God: I’ll make it quick.”
Tears glided down her face. “Wait,” she said softly.
“Can’t talk me out of this, girl.”
“I know.” And for that moment her voice was strong again, her anger beautiful with its vitality and life.
Bobbie raised her eyes, away from Jopek: her gaze pointing to the low stars. She was speaking to something she could not see. Was praying going to make this better? Michael wondered desperately. Was it—?
The gunshot flashed and illuminated Bobbie. She had no time to scream. Captain Jopek of the United States 101st turned in the starlight, watching Michael with eyes like guilty verdicts, the gunshot still echoing through the night, through Michael’s screaming heart.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Michael undocked.
That was how it felt: one moment, he was an inhabitant of his body. And then he was floating into the Capitol.
End. Dead. Thanks for playing.
Screams, in the black of Capitol rotunda. Hank, screaming. His white shirt glowing like a spirit. Hank kicking out and striking the pirate-patched head of a bronzed governor, sending it ponging between cot legs, away into the dark.
Somebody turned out the lights.
The hall’s only illumination was coughing out of the tripod fluorescent light-banks. They were knocked over, thrown on the floor. . . .