the flyers had road maps on them). Four or five pickups abandoned in chaotic arrangement in the street and sidewalks. That’s more cars than there usually are, though, Michael thought. It occurred to him that the pickups might be a sign that people were still here, and for a second, before he could stop the thought, he pictured soldiers coming around the corner, soldiers they’d finally found.
He surveyed the crust of the snow, searching for footprints . . . but all he saw were wide, erratic imprints: evidence of the Bellows’ shambling gait. He felt a moment’s disappointment, but then also a relief.
There were only ten or so Bellow trails. Some tracks wound to a closed Dumpster he noted he should stay away from; most simply vanished into the dark open mouths of the buildings’ broken front doors. The few scattered Bellows here had sought their daytime sanctuaries in some of Coalmount’s dark crannies, but there weren’t as many Bellows as there had been during the weirdness in the woods last night. Not nearly as many.
“Looks like we’re gonna have to entertain ourselves today,” Michael said.
“What the?”
“No people have been out since last night’s snow. See?” He hopped off the car, pointing the binoculars at Coalmount. Patrick looked through excitedly, his cheek warm and smooth against Michael’s.
Bub’s lips moved silently; Michael knew he was counting something even before Bub lowered the binocs and informed him, “Eight flyers.”
The binocular strap looped around Michael’s neck, and when Patrick saw it drawing tight, he said softly, “Sorry—whoops.” Most kids would yank it as a joke.
But this kid isn’t most kids, Michael thought, smiling a little. Actually, sorta the opposite.
“You want to Game On?” Patrick asked after he’d looked at the town. Michael nodded.
As he always did when they began the day, he hoisted Patrick onto his shoulders, letting Bub do The Yell.
“We’re gonna Game On!” Patrick called to the town.
The Bellows’ echo, from all their hiding places: “GAAAAAME!”
Patrick’s own snow-muffled echo: . . . we’re gonna, gonna . . .
“I’m a butt!” Patrick added.
The dozen or so hidden Bellows informed them that they, too, were A BUUUUUTTT; Patrick giggled at himself. And standing there outside the town that was shouting back Patrick’s joke, Michael felt Bub’s happiness like a transmission, like a tingling signal that traveled perfectly through the fingers that Patrick tapped on his head, through the ankles that twisted in Michael’s hands as he laughed. And the last thread of the anxiety Michael had hardly realized he’d had slipped away. So they got in the car and drove into Coalmount, two Gamers gaming on.
Coalmount looked like it had been postapocalyptic even before Halloween.
Gray mountains, studded with dead trees, rose up and up beyond the buildings around them as Michael drove down Main Street. The sun was a tarnished dime that only got above the peaks at noon, so the towns always seemed like an image on a screen with permanently lowered brightness. A mile or so to the east, the gentle waving of the mountain range gave way to sharp rock, severe and flat: there the coal had been mined by exploding the mountaintops. The silhouette of the range was like a heartbeat measurement that had been alive and suddenly stopped.
When you said “West Virginia” before Halloween, Michael thought, places like this came to people’s minds. You thought of dusty sunlight through yellowing blinds; you thought of damp trailers; you thought of mountains that roamed and loomed and locked, like a fortress designed to keep you in. It was impossible, of course, to grow up in West Virginia and not be told roughly thirty times a week that “Coal Mining Is What Powers Your Lights.” But Michael’s hometown was just a “meh” suburb of the city where West Virginia University was, its own mountains tamed with Walmarts and McMansions. And in places like that, it was easy to believe that coal towns like this didn’t exist.
So entering these towns was always a slightly surreal experience.
Michael parked the Volvo in front of the Southern West Virginia Coal and Natural Gas office on Main Street, which sat beside a tired-looking red church. The office and the church were the only buildings on the road whose front doors and windows were still intact; unraided.
“Pop-Tart me,” Michael said, and they stepped out of the station wagon, Patrick handing Michael a foil-wrapped pastry, s’mores flavor: cornerstone of a healthy breakfast.
“So. Got the message from the Game Master,” Michael said. He paused, taking a bite of the