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They lived in a forgotten American dreamscape. A sliver cut from time.

There were other towns like it: coal towns, lumber towns. Places of Industry left to rot when some factory everyone worked at boarded up or government investment ran dry. Where people put down roots and built homes and schools and churches. Lives dependent on work.

An economy dependent on work.

Most of these kinds of towns eventually died. The young moved away, the elderly expired, and the wind turned their houses into wood and stone sculptures.

That was the best-case scenario.

The worst-case scenario was a town full of hungry people. Parents driving hours to other cities for work, paint peeling and metal rusting, time slowing and slowing until it stood still.

Good enough to keep things going. Not enough to ease anyone’s suffering.

Just enough that people refused to move away.

They stayed, caught. They died there.

Hollis understood why it chilled the sweat on James’s back.