Under the Dome

She smiled wanly. 'Quit worrying about me, if that's what you're doing. I'm okay for a middle-aged Republican lady who can't quite catch her breath. At least I managed to get myself rogered one more time. Right, good, and proper, too.'

Barbie smiled back. 'It was my pleasure, believe me.'

'What about the pencil nuke they're going to try on Sunday? What do you think?'

'I don't think. I only hope.'

'And how high are your hopes?'

He didn't want to tell her the truth, but the truth was what she deserved. 'Based on everything that's happened and the little we know about the creatures running the box, not very.'

'Tell me you haven't given up.'

'That I can do. I'm not even as scared as I probably should be. I think because... it's insidious. I've even gotten used to the stench.'

'Really?'

He laughed. 'No, How about you? Scared?'

'Yes, but sad, mostly. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a gasp.' She coughed again, curling a fist to her mouth. Barbie could hear other people doing the same thing. One would be the little boy who was now Thurston Marshall's little boy. He'll get some better stuff in the morning, Barbie thought, and then remembered how Thurston had put it: Air in rationed whiffs. That was no way for a kid to have to breathe.

No way for anyone to have to breathe.

Julia spat into the grass, then faced him again. 1 can't believe we did this to ourselves. The things running the box - the leather-heads - set up the situation, but I think they're only a bunch of kids watching the fun. Playing the equivalent of a video game, maybe. They're outside. We're inside, and we did it to ourselves.'

'You've got enough problems without beating yourself up on that score,'Barbie said.'If anyone's responsible, it's Rennie. He's the one who set up the drug lab, and he's the one who started raiding propane from every source in town. He's also the one who sent men out there and caused some sort of confrontation, I'm sure of it.f

^But who elected him?' Julia asked. 'Who gave him the power to do those things?'

'Not you. Your newspaper campaigned against him. Or am I wrong?'

'You're right,' she said, 'but only about the last eight years or so. At first the Democrat - me, in other words - thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. By the time I found out what he really was, he was entrenched. And he had poor smiling stupid Andy Sanders out front to run interference for him.'

'You still can't blame - '

'I can and do. If I'd known that pugnacious, incompetent sonofabitch might end up in charge during an actual crisis, I'd have... have... I'd have drowned him like a kitten in a sack.'

He laughed, then started coughing. 'You sound less like a Republican all the ti - ' he began, then broke off.

'What?' she asked, and then she heard it, too. Something was rattling and squeaking in the dark. It got closer and they saw a shambling figure tugging a child's wagon.

'Who's there?' called Dougie Twitchell.

When the shambling newcomer answered, his voice was slightly muffled. By an oxygen mask of his own, it turned out.

'Well, thank God,' Sloppy Sam said. 'I had me a little nap side of the road, and I thought I'd run out of air before I got up here. But here I am. Just in time, too, because I'm almost tapped out.'

CHAPTER 33

6

The Army encampment at Route 119 in Motton was a sad place that early Saturday morning. Only three dozen military personnel and one Chinook remained. A dozen men were loading in the big tents and a few leftover Air Max fans that Cox had ordered to the south side of the Dome as soon as the explosion had been reported. The fans had never been used. By the time they arrived, there was no one to appreciate the scant air they could push through the barrier. The fire was out by six p.m., strangled by lack of fuel and oxygen, but everyone on the Chester's Mill side was dead.

The medical tent was being taken down and rolled up by a dozen men. Those not occupied with that task had been set to that most ancient of Army jobs: policing up the area. It was make-work, but no one on the shit patrol minded. Nothing could make them forget the nightmare they had seen the previous afternoon, but grubbing up the wrappers, cans, bottles, and cigarette butts helped a little. Soon enough it would be dawn and the big Chinook would fire up. They'd climb aboard and go somewhere else. The members of this ragtag crew absolutely could not wait.

One of them was Pfc Clint Ames, from Hickory Grove, South Carolina. He had a green plastic Hefty bag in one hand and was moving slowly through the beaten-down grass, picking up the occasional discarded sign or flattened Coke can so if that hardass Sergeant Groh glanced over he'd look like he was working. He was nearly asleep on his feet, and at first he thought the knocking he heard (it sounded like knuckles on a thick Pyrex dish) was part of a dream. It almost had to be, because it seemed to be coming from the other side of the Dome.

He yawned and stretched with one hand pressing into the small of his back. As he was doing this, the knocking resumed. It really was coming from behind the blackened wall of the Dome.

Then, a voice. Weak and disembodied, like the voice of a ghost. It gave him the chills.

'Is anybody there? Can anybody hear me? Please... I'm dying.'

Christ, did he know that voice? It sounded like -

Ames dropped his litter bag and ran to the Dome. He put his hands on its blackened, still-warm surface. 'Cow-kid? Is that you?'

I'm crazy, he thought. It can't be. No one could have lived through that firestorm.

'AMES? Sergeant Groh bawled. 'What the hell are you doing over there?'

He was about to turn away when the voice behind the charred surface came again. 'It's me. Don't...' There was a ragged series of barking coughs. 'Don't go. If you're there, Private Ames, don't go.'

Now a hand appeared. It was as ghostly as the voice, the fingers smeared with soot. It was rubbing a clean place on the inside of the Dome, A moment later a face appeared. At first Ames didn't recognize the cow-kid. Then he realized the boy was wearing an oxygen mask.