Peter closed his eyes, feeling the sigh of relief crash across his chest, and looked back towards the campfire. The man Becky had been talking with was no more likely to take hold of a bottle or talk back than that poor wretch. None of them were. One by the one, the Dead left the clearing and wandered out into the light, their ashen skin lit by the moon as if its ghostly light had made them. Made of moon. Made of dust. Made of rot and pale luminescence.

“When are we going to take them down there?” Becky asked.

“Soon,” said Cooper.

“But when?”

“Soon.”

Cooper kicked snow over the campfire, killing the flame. It was only now Peter noticed that the red glow he’d seen over the ridge the night before hadn’t come from the fire at all, but something else much further down off the bluff inside the forest below them. But there was no time left to wonder what that might be. They were coming.

The Dead dispersed into the night. Peter waited until Cooper had led the others back down the ridge towards town. Then he ran.

22

Peter pounded the door with his fist. “Hello?” he called. “Sheriff O’Hurn? Teddy?”

He knocked again, more urgently this time, causing the bunch of bricks the old trailer was balanced on to shift. There was no answer. He stood on tiptoe, peering through a set of tie-back curtains left half-hanging off their hooks at the window. The glass was misted, but still no one came. Peter turned round, looking back into the night where rows of drunken telegraph poles hung over the snowbound road, their shadows striking out tall across the land in the light of the moon. In among them, old billboards at the roadside creaked and groaned beneath the weight of the snow like bison worn ragged by winter. Ahead, beads of light marked the town out from the vast, white land.

The trailer was only half a mile south out of West Wranglestone, kicked back off the road like a used tin can, but the town already looked so far away. Everything felt so far away.

The billboards moaned like their time on this land was nearly done. Peter stood listening to them while he caught his breath, when a rectangle of yellow light struck his feet.

“I take it Teddy pointed at the billboard and said billboard?”

Peter turned round and the sheriff leaned into the doorframe, a cigarette hanging loosely on his lips. He smiled. “In order for you to find us, I mean.”

“Oh,” said Peter clearing his throat. “No, I saw your Jeep tracks and followed them here.”

The cigarette stub left the sheriff’s mouth, dropping to sizzle in the snow below. “I was on the john just now and Teddy’s busy making dinner. I dint mean to frighten you by making you think we weren’t in.”

“You didn’t.”