“I dropped it . . . back at the bank. . . .” Michael said.
The snow streaked through the headlights; following the trails of the Rapture and the Shrieks, Michael turned off the highway, onto a rutted, country road. And Holly, still angry and disappointed, looked at him for the absolute minimum amount of time.
“I’ve got pepper spray,” she finally said. “My dad gave it to me the day I got my license.” After a minute, almost to herself: “I remember thinking, ‘Daddy, seriously: quit being so overprotective.’”
Gravel popped beneath the tires. The newly rough way was barely wide enough for the Hummer: bare branches of trees scratched the windows. Michael heard Holly jolt several times. As if to simply occupy herself, she tugged at the belly pocket of her hoodie until the seams popped; she found electrical tape in the glove compartment, then wrapped the cloth as a filthy bandage around Michael’s blood-crusted hand. It made the nerves in his wound screech, but he didn’t let himself cry out. She needed that distraction, and what other help did he have left to give her?
As they reached Main Street in Coalmount, Michael saw something glimmer in the headlights off to the right. His heart nearly imploded when he realized it was a Pop-Tart wrapper.
Patrick, Patrick. Sounding in Michael’s head like a bell. Patrick Dale Faris, Patrick Dale Faris—
Sounding in his head like a prayer.
Please, he thought, feeling sick with weakness, please help me, God, Universe, whatever. If You’re there, if Anybody is there, please!
But what did he expect? What the hell did he expect? The night was quiet, except for his car. And there was nothing in the sky but the cold witch-fire of the stars.
Holly sat there, inches away, finishing his bandage, but Michael had never felt so alone.
Nor so hopeless. Coalmount, an average coal town he’d explored by sled, now reminded him of a place obliterated by a hurricane. Great hectic gashes were torn into the storefronts; lampposts were ripped from their concrete; old burnt-out cars had been turned pathetically onto their sides. Past the Food’N’Such grocery store (tomato soup, he thought, his chest clutching), Michael saw that the big, yellow school bus that once had blockaded the street was now in two pieces, the metal shredded down the center by some massive force. On the cramped Charleston streets and winding mountain roads, the sheer number of the Shrieks’ footprints had been disguised by the Rapture’s own tire tracks. But now, traveling through these wide-open ruins and taking the one and only road out of Coalmount, Michael began to truly understand what it was he was steering toward in this ghost’s world. Not just the Rapture. Every Bellow—every one of the Bellows that had lain in every Charleston street—had risen again as Shrieks and led this lunatics’ stampede, drawn by some dark instinctive signal of the blood. Every. Effing. One. He tried to picture Them, but their sheer number somehow made it impossible.
A random memory occurred: lying in a whispering field of timothy grass when he was a boy, asking Mom how many miles were in outer space.
Not miles, she whispered. She had smiled for him. It just goes and goes and goes, she said.
The idea of infinity—both simple and unimaginable—had horrified him, somehow.
What’m I going to do? What?
But that was when the Hummer made a dramatic turn, and uphill, perhaps a mile away, the mountain road ended with what should have been a gentle mountain peak.
But of course, the peak wasn’t there.
The gentle, heartbeat-measurement-like mountain range was killed dead, the summit ripped away. In place of the apex, there was instead only a severe line of decapitation.
COALMOUNT MOUNTAINTOP QUARRY
“We’re here,” Holly whispered.
Michael gulped, turning off the headlights, slowing to ten miles an hour.
Even with the headlamps off, there was light enough to steer by: an eerie glow shot straight up from the earth ahead. Like high school football-field lights. It made him think of Ron, and there was one frightening, bitter moment when Michael nearly burst into laughter at the thought that Ron had once been his ultimate idea of evil.
The electric light radiated from the “decapitation” line, which marked the end of both the road and the mountain’s ascent.
“It’s the quarry pit for the mine,” Michael whispered. Which was supposed to, what, sound insightful?
What’s happening in there? What are they doing to Patrick?
As the Hummer inched up the mountain, the light filled the cab, sickly blue-white. So effing bright. What if Rapture lookouts were watching? At