- •It's a dream, he told himself. If you keep telling yourself that, you'll be able to operate.
- •It was useless, of course. Even more useless, he was waving his arms in big go-away gestures.
- •Interdiction? Interdiction? What kind of Fedspeak was that?
- •Xxxx70yyyy
- •Very low, Rose said: 'Barbie, you're scaring me.'
- •I'll have to Xerox the paper. Wliich means seven hundred and fifty copies, max.
- •Xet me finish. Your side of 119 is totally fubar.That means—'
- •It wasn't much, but Barbie was encouraged. 'Stand easy, tellas; stand easy and let's talk this over.'
- •I'm a little scared.
- •In the other bed Judy stirred and spoke. 'Mumma? Is it brefkus? Did I miss the bus?'
- •If it was petit mal, it would stop on its own.
- •In a moment she still wasn't completely there, although her eyes shifted and he knew she was seeing and hearing him now. 'Stop Halloween, Daddy! You have to stop Halloween!'
- •It was time for a demonstration, which he of course would lead.
- •I must see you tonight. God has spoken to me. Now I must speak to you before I speak to the town. Please reply. Richie Killian will carry your message to me.
- •I knew all that high school shotputting would catch up with me someday, he thought.
- •It's all those r-rated movies they watch now, Big Jim thought. Rubbing
- •It was the boy who answered. He spoke while still examining the headlamp. 'I want my mother. And I want my breffus.'
- •It was a bathroom, and it 'was empty. There was, however, a picture of a very Caucasian Jesus on the wall.
- •In Washington, Colonel Cox said:'Roger that, Major. Good luck. Blast the bastard.'
- •Interesting.
- •I like it because it is bitter, she thought. And because it is my heart.
- •Instead of answering the question, Barbie said,'Selectman Rennie could be a dangerous man to press right about now.'
- •It was exactly what she t'ought, and Julia had told him so. She had also planted a kiss on his cheek. 'I owe you for this, Rommie.'
- •It's because he scares you a little, he thought. That's all it is.
- •It's one possibility. It's also possible that some earthly supervillain set it up. A real-world Lex Luthor. Or it could be the work of a renegade country, like North Korea.'
- •It was entirely possible he was the last thing on Brenda's mind, but his radar was pinging and he watched her closely.
- •I'll get up in a minute, she told herself. Get the last bottle of Poland Spring out of the fridge and wash that foul taste out of my mou…
- •II have no idea what you're talking about. I think your grief…' He sighed, spread his blunt-fingered hands.'Come inside.We'll discuss this and I'll set your mind at rest.'
- •It was impossible for Boxer to draw himself up any further, and yet somehow he did. His face was so red it was almost purple. 'Then take me to court! What court? Case closed! Ha!'
- •3 P.M. Julia—
- •If the Dome wasn't bad enough, weird enough, there's the Selectman from Hell.
- •If he was in the storage building, though… that might be a problem.
- •It was a lot to think about, and thinking was easier these days when he was smoked up.
- •In the background she heard the swish of a car, and Benny, faint but clear, hailing someone: 'Dr Rusty! Yo, dude, whoa!'
- •It was Ginny Tomlinson, walking slowly up the hallway toward them.
- •INever mind. I'll be back as soon as I can, Hari. Keep 'em flying.'
- •It isn't a migraine making him do that. At least not any migraine I ever heard of.
- •It all seemed so long ago.
- •If was. She slipped in, a pale and limping ghost.
- •I'm all right. It's just overwork. Nothing seven hours of sleep won't cure.
- •I no longer want this job. No. Not even a little bit.
- •I have gone to the hospital. There has been a shooting there.
- •It had to begin with letting Barbie know he wasn't alone. Then he could plan his own actions accordingly.
- •If you were here, Colonel Cox, I'd give you a taste of what I gave Coggins. With God as my witness, I would.
- •It: was a joke.
- •Isn 't it more likely that the counter's malfunctioning? You could be giving yourself a lethal dose of gamma rays at this very second. The damn thing's a cold war relic.
- •Instead he approached the box again and dropped to his knees before it, a posture too much like worship for his liking.
- •I 'Oh my goodness, Ginny's in love,' Rusty said, grinning.
- •It was true. Andi was still pale, and much too thin, but the dark circles under her eyes had faded a little, and the eyes themselves had a new spark. 'Thanks for saying so.'
- •It now read c fee and doare ot free.
- •It took a moment for Carter to get it. 'She was just having a bunch of dope-ass hallucinations, wasn't she?'
- •I follow it.'
- •It was Chief Randolph, trudging up the hill and mopping his bright red face with a handkerchief.
- •If he sees us, I'm going to run him down, she thought. The idea brought a certain perverse calm.
- •It's an eighth of a mile at most, but Henry doesn't argue. 'Put her in the front seat of my car.'
- •I'm not your son, your son is dead. Carter thought… but didn't say. He went into the bunkrooni to see if there were any candybars on the shelves in there.
- •I'm crazy, he thought. It can't be. No one could have lived through that firestorm.
- •I pushed the wrong button, that's all.
- •It was almost as dark in the ruins of the Town Hall conference room as in the shelter, but with one big difference: the air was worthless.
- •I did. On purpose. Who the hell wants to turn forty? What is it?'
- •II hear you. Give it your best shot.'
- •I don't know, Barbie thought. J don't know what's happening.
- •Very young; barely out of the nursery, in fact. It speaks.
Isn 't it more likely that the counter's malfunctioning? You could be giving yourself a lethal dose of gamma rays at this very second. The damn thing's a cold war relic.
But as he approached the edge of the orchard, Rusty saw a squirrel dart through the grass and run up one of the trees. It paused on a branch weighted down with unpicked fruit and stared at the two-legs intruder below, its eyes bright, its tail bushed out. To Rusty it looked fine as fiddlesticks, and he saw no animal corpses in the grass, or on the overgrown lanes between the trees: no suicides, and no probable radiation victims, either.
Now he was very close to the light, its timed flashes so brilliant that he squeezed his eyes nearly shut each time it came. To his right, the whole world seemed to lie at his feet. He could see the town, toylike and perfect, four miles away. The grid of the streets; the steeple of the Congo church; the twinkle of a few cars on the move. He could see the low brick structure of Catherine Russell Hospital, and, far to the west, the black smudge where the missiles had struck. It hung there, a beauty mark on the cheek of the day. The sky overhead was a faded blue, almost its normal color, but at the horizon the blue became a poison yellow. He felt quite sure some of that color had been caused by pollution—the same crap that had turned the stars pink—but he suspected most of it was nothing more sinister than autumn pollen sticking to the Dome's unseen surface.
He got moving again. The longer he was up here—especially up here and out of view—the more nervous his friends would become. He wanted to go directly to the source of the light, but first he walked out of the orchard and to the edge of the slope. From here he could see the others, although they were little more than specks. He set the Geiger counter down, then waved both hands slowly back and forth over his head to show he was okay. They waved back.
'Okay,' he said. Inside the heavy gloves, his hands were slick with sweat. 'Let's see what we've got here.'
16
It was snack-time at East Street Grammar School. Judy and Janelle Everett sat at the far end of the play-yard with their friend Deanna Carver, who was six—thus fitting neatly between the Little Js, age-wise. Deanna was wearing a small blue armband around the left sleeve of her tee-shirt. She had insisted that Carrie tie it on her before she went to school, so she could be like her parents. 'What's it for?' Janelle asked.
'It means I like the police,' Deanna said, and munched on her Fruit Roll-Up.
'I want one,' Judy said, 'only yellow.' She pronounced this word very carefully. Back when she was a baby she'd said leilo, and Jannie had laughed at her.
'They can't be yellow,' Deanna said,'only blue. This Roll-Up is good. I wish I had a billion.'
'You'd get fat,' Janelle said. 'You'd bust!
They giggled at this, then fell silent; for a little while and watched the bigger kids, the Js nibbling on their homemade peanut butter crackers. Some girls were playing hopscotch. Boys were climbing on the monkeybars, and Miss Goldstone was pushing the Pruitt twins on the swing-glider. Mrs Vanedestine had organized a kickball game.
It all looked pretty normal, Janelle thought, but it wasn't normal. Nobody was shouting, nobody was wailing with a scraped knee, Mindy and Mandy Pruitt weren't begging Miss Goldstone to admire their matching hair-dos.They all looked like they were just pretending snack-time, even the grownups. And everyone—including her—kept stealing glances up at the sky, which should have been blue and wasn't, quite.
None of that was the worst, though. The worst—ever since the seizures—was the suffocating certainty that something bad was going to happen.
Deanna said,'I was going to be the Little Mermaid on Halloween, but now I en't. I en't going to be nothing. I don't want to go out. I'm scared of Halloween.'
'Did you have a bad dream?' Janelle asked.
'Yes.' Deanna held out her Fruit Roll-Up. 'Do you want the rest of this. I en't so hungry as I thought.'
'No,'Janelle said. She didn't even want the rest of her peanut butter crackers, and that wasn't a bit like her. And Judy had eaten just half a cracker. Janelle remembered once how she'd seen Audrey corner a mouse in their garage. She remembered how Audrey had barked, and lunged at the mouse when it tried to scurry from the corner it was in. That had made her feel sad, and she called her mother to take Audrey away so she wouldn't eat the mousie. Mummy laughed, but she did it.
Now they were the mice. Jannie had forgotten most of the dreams she'd had during the seizures, but still she knew this much.
Now they were the ones in the corner.
'I'm just going to stay home,' Deanna said. A tear stood in her left eye, bright and clear and perfect.'Stay home all Halloween. En't even coming to school. Won't. Can't: nobody make me.'
Mrs Vanedestine left the kickball game and began ringing the all-in bell, but none of the three girls stood up at first.
'It's Halloween already,'Judy said.'Look.' She pointed across the street to where a pumpkin stood on the porch of the Wheelers' house. 'And look.' This time she pointed to a pair of cardboard ghosts flanking the post office doors. 'And look!
This last time she pointed at the library lawn. Here was a stuffed dummy that had been put up by Lissa Jamieson. She had undoubtedly meant it to be amusing, but what amuses adults often scares children, and Janelle had an idea the dummy on the library lawn might be back to visit her that night while she was lying in the dark and waiting to go to sleep.
The head was burlap with eyes that were white crosses made from thread. The hat was like the one the cat wore in the Dr Seuss story. It had garden trowels for hands (bad old clutchy-grabby hands, Janelle thought) and a shirt with something written on it. She didn't understand what it meant, but she could read the words: SWEET HOME ALABAMA PLAY THAT DEAD BAND SONG.
'See?' Judy wasn't crying, but her eyes were wide and solemn, full of some knowledge too complex and too dark to be expressed. 'Halloween already'
Janelle took her sister's hand and pulled her to her feet. 'No it's not,' she said… but she was afraid it was. Something bad was going to happen, something with a fire in it. No treats, only tricks. Mean tricks. Bad tricks.
'Let's go inside,' she told Judy and Deanna. 'We'll sing songs and stuff. That'll be nice.'
It usually was, but not that day. Even before the big bang in the sky, it wasn't nice. Janelle kept thinking about the dummy with the white-cross eyes. And the somehow awful shirt: PLAY THAT DEAD BAND SONG.
17
Four years before the Dome dropped down, Linda Everett's grandfather had died and left each of his grandchildren a small but tidy sum of money. Linda's cheek had come to $17,232.04. Most of it went into the Js' college fund, but she had felt more than justified in spending a few hundred on Rusty. His birthday was coming up, and he'd wanted an Apple TV gadget since they'd come on the market some years earlier.
She had bought him more expensive presents during the course of their marriage, but never one which pleased him more. The idea that he could download movies from the Net, then watch them on TV instead of being chained to the smaller screen of his computer, tickled him to death. The gadget was a white plastic square, about seven inches on a side and three-quarters of an inch thick. The object Rusty found on Black Ridge looked so much like his Apple TV add-on that he at first thought it actually was one… only modified, of course, so it could hold an entire town prisoner as well as broadcast The Little Mermaid to your television via Wi-Fi and in HD.
The thing on the edge of the McCoy Orchard was dark gray instead of white, and rather than the familar apple logo stamped on top of it, Rusty observed this somehow troubling symbol:
Above the symbol was a hooded excrescence about the size of the knuckle on his little finger. Inside the hood was a lens made of either glass or crystal. It was from this that the spaced purple flashes were coming.
Rusty bent and touched the surface of the generator—if it was a generator. A strong shock immediately surged up his arm and through his body. He tried to pull back and couldn't. His muscles were locked up tight. The Geiger counter gave a single bray, then fell silent. Rusty had no idea whether or not the needle swung into the danger zone, because he couldn't move his eyes, either. The light was leaving the world, funneling out of it like water going down a bathtub drain, and he thought with sudden calm clarity: I'm going to die. What a stupid way to g—
Then, in that darkness, faces arose—only they weren't human faces, and later he would not be sure they were faces at all. They were geometric solids that seemed to be padded in leather. The only parts of them that looked even vaguely human were diamond shapes on the sides. They could have been ears. The heads—if they were heads—turned to each other, either in discussion or something that could have been mistaken for it. He thought he heard laughter. He thought he sensed excitement. He pictured children in the play-yard at East Street Grammar—his girls, perhaps, and their friend Deanna Carver—exchanging snacks and secrets at recess.
All of this happened in a space of seconds, surely no more than four or five. Then it was gone. The shock dissipated as suddenly and completely as it did when people first touched the surface of the Dome; as quickly as his lightheadedness and the accompanying vision of the dummy in the crooked tophat. He was just kneeling at the top of the ridge overlooking the town, and sweltering in his leaden accessories.
Yet the image of those leatherheads remained. Leaning together and laughing in obscenely childish conspiracy.
The others are down there watching me. Wave. Show them you're all right.
He raised both hands over his head—now they moved smoothly—and waved them slowly back and forth, just as if his heart were not pounding like a jackrabbit in his chest, as if sweat weren't running down his chest in sharply aromatic rivulets.
Below, on the road, Rommie and the kids waved back.
Rusty took several deep breaths to calm himself, then held the Geiger counter's sensor tube out to the flat gray square, which sat on a spongy mat of grass. The needle wavered just below the +5 mark. A background count, no more.
Rusty had little doubt that this flat square object was the source of their troubles. Creatures—not human beings, creatures—were using it to keep them prisoner, but that wasn't all. They were also using it to observe.
And having fun. The bastards were laughing. He had heard them.
Rusty stripped off the apron, draped it over the box with its slightly protruding lens, got up, backed away. For a moment nothing happened. Then the apron caught fire. The smell was pungent and nasty. He watched the shiny surface blister and bubble, watched the flames erupt. Then the apron, which was essentially no more than a plastic-coated sheet of lead, simply fell apart. For a moment there were burning pieces, the biggest one still lying on top of the box. A moment later, the apron—or what remained of it—disintegrated. A few swirling bits of ash remained—and the smell—but otherwise… poof. Gone.
Did I see that? Rusty asked himself, then said it aloud, asking the world. He could smell roasted plastic and a heavier smell that he supposed was smelted lead—insane, impossible—but the apron was gone nonetheless.
'Did I actually see that?'
As if in answer, the purple light flashed out of the hooded knuckle on top of the box. Were those pulses renewing the Dome, the way the touch of a finger on a computer keyboard could refresh the screen? Were they allowing the leatherheads to watch the town? Both? Neither?
He told himself not to approach the flat square again. He told himself the smartest thing he could do would be to run back to the van (without the weight of the apron, he could run) and then drive like hell, slowing only to pick up his companions waiting below.