By the time Mike reached the door, Frank Jackson had pushed his way through the babbling crowd. Seeing the stocky, gray-haired form of the union's secretary-treasurer, followed by five other miners from the local, Mike felt a flash of pride. UMWA. Solidarity forever.

Meeting Frank's eyes, Mike shrugged and shook his head. "I don't know what happened either. Let's go outside and check around."

A few seconds later, the little group of men was passing through the entrance to the high school and making their way onto the parking lot. Seeing him come, dozens of Mike's local union members started moving in his direction. Most of them even had enough self-possession to leave their drinks behind in the vehicles.

Mike's first concern was for the high school itself. His eyes ranged up and down the long row of buildings, looking for any signs of damage. But none of the beige and white structures seemed to have been harmed at all.

"Everything looks okay," muttered Ed with heartfelt relief. The relatively new consolidated high school-built not much more than two decades ago, using a lot of voluntary labor-was the pride and joy of the rural area. For no one was that more true than its principal.

Mike looked to the west, toward Grantville. The town itself, two miles away, was hidden behind the hills which gave northern West Virginia its distinctive landscape. But Mike couldn't detect any obvious indications of trouble in that direction either.

His eyes moved to the south. The high school had been built on a gentle slope north of Buffalo Creek. At the bottom of that slope, just beyond the end of the parking lot, U.S. Route 250 ran parallel to the small river. The hills on the other side of the little valley were steep, covered with trees, and uninhabited except for a handful of trailers.

Nothing. His eyes began following the highway at the bottom of the slope, toward the large town of Fairmont some fifteen miles to the east.