meant that the store was brighter inside than Food’N’Such. It was also less pickle-y, if more well raided. Michael noted patches in the wood paneling above the door that were a lighter shade than the paneling around them; somebody had even taken the bubble-letter words that had been hanging there. The pale patches were in the shape of these words:
GOD. COAL. BELIEVE.
The ghost words were kind of creepy, for some reason.
Michael and Patrick found an aisle with some kid-sized shovels and rakes hanging on pegs; a handwritten sign claimed that the tools MAKE GREAT BIRTHDAY GIFTS! That just doesn’t seem very likely, Michael thought, amused. Farther up the aisle, twisted coat hangers lay scattered on the floor, some still bearing children’s black sweatshirts. One looked like it actually might be Bub’s fit, but when Michael checked, the neck tag said it wasn’t 100 percent cotton. Which was one of the things that the idiot “doctors” who Ron thought were so awesome had been right about: the feel of synthetics drove Patrick sorta bonkers.
The glass of the store’s firearms counter was shattered; not so much as a single bullet remained. They did find a couple hunter-orange sleeping bags, though, and a bathroom in the back of the store with a Bellow-repelling daylit window. Michael placed roughly half the nation’s remaining reserves of toilet paper onto the chilly seat; Patrick thought that was hilarious. Well, Michael might happily do a lot in the name of The Game, but one indignity he wouldn’t endure (for the third time, ugh) was getting his butt cheeks frozen to a porcelain thunder box.
They were walking down the road again when Michael stopped and said, “Wait. Wait, I’m not thinking.” He looked back at Mountaineer Supply, an image flashing behind his eyes. The boards on the windows. The holes.
Not accidental, something in him said. Those were, like, sniper holes.
Taking Patrick by the hand, he jogged back to the store. He checked the floors around the windows that overlooked the streets and soon he discovered that he’d been right. There was a duffel bag, filled with ammunition, lying by a window behind the cash register. Boxes of bullets for every gun caliber inside. He felt good, pleased, for a second. Then he realized that the bag was camouflage, and not the leaves-and-grass kind of camo that people use for hunting.
Soldier camo.
Wait—were soldiers here? And if they had been, why would they leave this? What would happen to make them leave it?
Patrick, standing a few feet behind Michael, gasped.
Michael’s hand blurred automatically for the rifle strapped on his own shoulder. But Patrick was just standing at GREAT BIRTHDAY GIFTS, picking up a tiny toy: a windup tin man with a pickax, like the no-face guy at the fountain.
“Michael?”
“Yeah?”
“You . . . okay?” Patrick said, sounding worried.
Michael said, “Yeah,” then he wound the key of the toy for Bub. The toy man raised his arms and “mined” . . . though Michael couldn’t help but think that it also looked like he was driving back invisible monsters.
“A. Roe-Bot. Like. Meee,” Patrick grinned, delighted.
When Patrick turned the key, though, it snapped off in his hand.
The sadness Michael saw flash behind his eyes was swift and familiar and overpowering.
“Whoa, buddy, you’re strong,” Michael said.
Patrick looked up at Michael. “Yeah,” he said. His face relaxed. “Ya-ya.”
Love you, too, Michael thought. Then said: “Ya-ya, too.”
100 points already. Reloaded rifle!
If soldiers were here, why would they leave stuff behind?
Maybe . . . some are here?
No, he thought. Anybody could have a bag like that. It probably just belonged to someone who had lived here in this town and left for the Safe Zone.
But Michael found something amazing at the bottom of the hill that made him wonder if he was wrong.
A short school bus, yellow in the road, sat longways across the span of the street, jammed perfectly snug with both ends striking buildings, sandbags stuffed underneath the belly. A barricade.
“They’re protecting something on the other side,” he said to Patrick, who looked up at him, excited.
The body and windows of the bus were peppered with bullet holes, though, like the aftermath of an enormous conflict, which was probably not the best indicator that the blockade had been a success. But still.
Don’t get your hopes up, Michael. Don’t.
Michael called out for Bellows to mimic him: “I’ve got butt pimples—”
“—They are narsty—” called Patrick, giggling.
But no one, and no thing, responded. They crawled through a small cove in the sandbags, Patrick going first, fake farting the