He thought: My hands are gripping some sort of alien artifact. A machine from another world. I may have even caught a glimpse of its operators.
The idea was intellectually amazing—flabbergasting, even—but it had no emotional gradient, perhaps because he was too stunned, too overwhelmed with information that did not compute.
So what next? fust what the hell next?
He didn't know. And it seemed he wasn't emotionally flat after all, because a wave of despair rolled through him, and he was only just able to stop from vocalizing that despair in a cry. The four people downi below might hear it and think he was in trouble. Which, of course, he was. Nor was he alone.
He got to his feet on legs that trembled and threatened to give out beneath him. The hot, close air seeined to lie on his skin like oil. He made his way slowly back toward the van through the apple-heavy trees. The only thing he was sure of was that under no circumstances could Big Jim Rennie learn of the generator. Not because he would try to destroy it, but because he'd very likely set a guard around it to make sure it wasn't destroyed. To make sure it kept right on doing what it was doing, so he could keep on doing what he was doing. For the time being, at least, Big Jim liked things just the way they were.
Rusty opened the door of the van and that was when, less than a mile north of Black Ridge, a huge explosion rocked the day. It was as if God had leaned down and fired a heavenly shotgun.
Rusty shouted in surprise and looked up. He immediately shielded his eyes from the fierce temporary sun burning in the sky over the border between TR-90 and Chester's Mill. Another plane had crashed into the Dome. Only this time it had been no mere Seneca V. Black smoke billowed up from the point of impact, which Rusty estimated as being at least twenty thousand feet. If the black spot left by the missile strikes was a beauty mark on the cheek of the day, then this new mark was a skin tumor. One that had been allowed to run wild.
Rusty forgot about the generator. He forgot about the four people waiting for him. He forgot about his own children, for whom he had just risked being burned alive and then discorporated. For a space of two minutes, there was no room for anything in his mind but black awe.
Rubble was falling to earth on the other side of the Dome. The smashed forward quarter of the jetliner was followed by a flaming motor; the motor was followed by a waterfall of blue airline seats, many with passengers still strapped into them; the seats were followed by a vast shining wing, seesawing like a sheet of paper in a draft; the wing was followed by the tail of what was probably a 767. The tail was painted dark green. A lighter green shape had been superimposed on it. It looked to Rusty like a clover.
Not a clover, a shamrock.
Then the body of the plane crashed to earth like a defective arrow and lit the woods on fire.
18
The blast rocks the town and they all come out to see. All over Chester's Mill, they come out to see. They stand in front of their houses, in driveways, on sidewalks, in the middle of Main Street. And although the sky north of their prison is mostly cloudy, they have to shield their eyes from the glare—what looked to Rusty, from his place atop Black Ridge, like a second sun.
They see what it is, of course; the sharper-eyed among them can even read the name on the body of the plummeting plane before it disappears below the treeline. It is nothing supernatural; it has even happened before, and just this week (although on a smaller scale, admittedly). But in the people of Chester's Mill, it inspires a kind of sullen dread that will hold sway over the town from then until the end.
Anyone who has ever cared for a terminal patient will tell you that there comes a tipping point when denial dies and acceptance finds its way in. For most people in Chester's Mill, the tipping point came at midmorning on October twenty-fifth, while they stood either alone or with their neighbors, watching as more than three hundred people plunged into the woods of TR-90.
Earlier that morning, perhaps fifteen percent of the town was wearing blue 'solidarity' armbands; by sundown on this Wednesday in October, it will be twice that. When the sun conies up tomorrow, it will be over fifty percent of the population.
Denial gives way to acceptance; acceptance breeds dependence. Anyone who's ever cared for a terminal patient will tell you that, too. Sick people need someone who will bring them their pills and glasses of cold sweet juice to wash them down with. They need someone to soothe their aching joins with arnica gel. They need someone to sit with them when the night is dark and the hours stretch out. They need someone to say, Sleep now, it will be better in the morning. I'm here, so sleep. Sleep now. Sleep and let me take care of everything.
Sleep.
19
