He came to the drug store with the neon medicine bottle at the window exactly like the one back in West Wranglestone and stepped up to the door. Shards of wood surrounding the lock had exploded outward at force. Bits of broken glass beneath the window crunched underfoot. They formed a trail leading away from the store out across the sidewalk.

“Becky?” he whispered. “Becky.”

“Gimme a minute,” she said, stepping inside. “Wait there.”

Peter clapped his hands together to warm them and looked back down the length of Mainstreet. Tokala raised his hand in a motionless wave. Peter did the same. He turned round, crossing the sidewalk and followed the bits of broken glass out on to the middle of the street where another trail of glass met him. Peter looked up. On the other side of the road from the drug store, the double doors to the movie theatre were locked, but something had clearly burst violently through their glass panels. And where the thrust of the theatre’s marquee shielded the sidewalk from much of the snowfall, was blood. Perhaps the town hadn’t protected itself from the Dead in the same way as West Wranglestone. But the doors hadn’t been broken in by an outside attack. They’d exploded outwards. Peter swung round. Eyes wide. Heart alert. Something else had happened here. It was only now he noticed all the windows and doors across town. Every last one of them had burst out from the inside.

Overhead, the giant O of the Coca-Cola sign creaked on its cable.

The broken fairy lights swayed.

Snow drifted across each of the black letters in It’s a Wonderful Life and Peter gazed up. The same movie, playing in the same town that wasn’t the same town. His attention turned to the ticket booth. The glass frontage was mostly iced over, making it difficult to see in. And you could easily have passed by, believing the booth to be empty, if it weren’t for one thing. Poking through the slot in the glass used to issue tickets, was a hand.

The skin was ashen, drained of any life by death. And yet, this hand wasn’t like any Peter had seen before, where snagged nails poked up from rotting stumps. These fingers were clean of any decay with sheen still left on the nails.

Peter swung back round towards the drug store, looking for Becky, but she was still rummaging around inside. He knew better than to call out for her. He looked towards the foot of Mainstreet, noting that Tokala was still standing guard, and turned back towards the ticket booth.