Free The End Games by T. Michael Martin Page A

interstate in the morning and follow the
     road to the Safe Zone. To Game Over.
    And maybe even to Mom—
    “Bub, how ’bout a bike ride?”
    “Huh?” Patrick began, but Michael shouted, “Hold on to something!” and crushed the brake.
    He did not know why . The yes-yes was telling him to, that was all.
    The car screamed over the frozen concrete, and when it finally came to a stop, Michael
     understood.
    His headlights revealed the bottom of a flipped eighteen-wheeler, perhaps ten yards
     ahead. A dozen Bellows crawled over the underparts, glistening like wasps. If he hadn’t
     braked, either the Bellows or the wreck would have ended him.
    He wasn’t psychic, that wasn’t it. Just accustomed to the terrible. Very much so.
     Just ask Ron.
     
    The remaining motorcyclists were still a half mile back, negotiating the traffic tangles.
     Michael hooked his .22 caliber over his shoulder and carried Patrick from the Volvo.
    Michael unbungeed the mountain bike from the back of the car, Patrick still piggyback,
     then guided the bike through stalled cars toward the guardrail on the side of the
     interstate, taking out, with his rifle, two Bellows who followed from the eighteen-wheeler.
    When they reached the guardrail, Michael put the car keys in his pocket, and something
     deep inside of him seemed to tear. He and Mom had gone to Myrtle Beach a thousand
     times in that car, back when it was just the two of them.
    “Michael? Why’re you sad?” Patrick asked, leaning over Michael’s shoulder and peering
     at his expression with growing dread in his voice.
    God, he sees everything. Control yourself.
    “I’m not, pfff ,” Michael said, and turned toward the guardrail.
    The falling darkness beyond the railing: a sheer downhill slope, mohawked clear of
     trees in the middle where power lines were strung, dense Bellow-sounding woodlands
     surrounding the empty lane on both sides.
    It looked like a path off the edge of the known world. Like a void, waiting to swallow
     him.
    No. No. I’ve done worse, Michael told himself. That ride had been when he was thirteen, and the bike had been
     his birthday present. In his pickup, Ron had taken Michael to the top of a mountain-bike
     trail in the city park. “Well go ’head,” he’d said, and seemed a thousand miles tall,
     his smell like sweat and strong coffee, the sun glinting the gem of his championship
     football ring. But the trail was nasty, snarled with roots. “Your mother and I worked
     hard for this bike. If you think we got money layin’ around, you can go on back to
     dreamin’,” Ron said, seeing Michael’s hesitation. “Do you know what hard work is, Michael-boy?”
    “I—”
    “Oh, did I know you’d pull this shit. You ain’t sittin’ on your ass with your damn video games all day
     while your mother and I work. A boy should want to ride his bike. Don’t you think that’s what real boys want?” Ron was a bomb. Yes,
     he was a bomb, and that was the first time Michael lit him. But when Michael’s tears
     threatened— tears a real boy would never have, he thought—Ron said softly, “’Course, maybe the problem is, this boy’s really becoming a man .” The hairy hand Ron placed on Michael’s shoulder had felt amazing, like everything
     that was powerful and mysterious and special about grown-ups. How easy it is to believe
     in kindness when you are young and your world has not yet ended. So Michael rode the
     trail.
    He spent the rest of his birthday in the emergency room, his collarbone broken in
     two places.
     
    But that was before, Michael told himself. Back when I still thought he was safe. Before I realized I had to, like, take scary
     things and use them.
    This wasn’t a suicide run. This was a hill made of Awesome and Getaway.
    Michael lifted Patrick into the kid’s seat mounted on the back of the bike. God, he
     felt so small.
    “We’re gonna hafta go purty fast,” Michael said. “Sooo guess who gets to control our