Under the Dome

the left side of the road.

“Walk that far,” Rusty said. “All four of you. Let’s see if you pass out again.”

“Cheesus,” Benny said, joining Joe. “What am I, a guinea pig?”

“Actually, I think Rommie’s the guinea pig. You up for it, Rommie?”

“Yuh.” He turned to the kids. “If I pass out and you don’t, drag me back here. It seems to be out of range.”

The quartet walked to the scuff-marks, Rusty watching intently from behind the wheel of the van. They had almost reached them when Rommie first slowed, then staggered. Norrie and Benny reached out on one side to steady him, Joe on the other. But Rommie didn’t fall. After a moment he straightened up again.

“Dunno if it was somethin real or only… what do you call it… the power of suggestion, but I’m okay now. Was just a little light-headed for a second, me. You kids feel anything?”

They shook their heads. Rusty wasn’t surprised. It was like chick-enpox: a mild sickness mostly suffered by children, who only caught it once.

“Drive ahead, Doc,” Rommie said. “You don’t want to be carryin all those pieces of lead sheet up there if you don’t have to, but be careful.”

Rusty drove slowly forward. He heard the accelerating pace of clicks from the Geiger counter, but felt absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. From the ridge, the light flashed out at fifteen-second intervals. He reached Rommie and the children, then passed them.

“I don’t feel anyth—” he began, and then it came: not light-headedness, exactly, but a sense of strangeness and peculiar clarity. While it lasted he felt as if his head were a telescope and he could see anything he wanted to see, no matter how far. He could see his brother making his morning commute in San Diego, if he wanted to.

Somewhere, in an adjacent universe, he heard Benny call out: “Whoa, Dr. Rusty’s losin it!”

But he wasn’t; he could still see the dirt road perfectly well. Divinely well. Every stone and chip of mica. If he had swerved—and he supposed he had—it was to avoid the man who was suddenly standing there. The man was skinny, and made taller by an absurd red, white, and blue stovepipe hat, comically crooked. He was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt that read SWEET HOME ALABAMA PLAY THAT DEAD BAND SONG.

That’s not a man, it’s a Halloween dummy.

Yes, sure. What else could it be, with green garden trowels for hands and a burlap head and stitched white crosses for eyes?

“Doc! Doc! ” It was Rommie.

The Halloween dummy burst into flames.

A moment later it was gone. Now there was just the road, the ridge, and the purple light, flashing at fifteen-second intervals, seeming to say Come on, come on, come on.

12

Rommie pulled open the driver’s door. “Doc… Rusty… you okay?”

“Fine. It came, it went. I assume it was the same for you. Rommie, did you see anything?”

“No. For a minute I t’ought I smelled fire. But I think that’s cause the air smells so smoky.”

“I saw a bonfire of burning pumpkins,” Joe said. “I told you that, right?”

“Yes.” Rusty hadn’t attached enough significance to it, in spite of what he’d heard from his own daughter’s mouth. Now he did.

“I heard screaming,” Benny said, “but I forget the rest.”

“I heard it too,” Norrie said. “It was daytime, but still dark. There was that screaming. And—I think—there was soot falling on my face.”

“Doc, maybe we better go back,” Rommie said.

“Isn’t gonna happen,” Rusty said. “Not if there’s a chance I can get my kids—and everyone else’s kids—out of here.”

“Bet some adults would like to go too,” Benny remarked. Joe threw him an elbow.

Rusty looked at the Geiger counter. The needle was pegged on +200. “Stay here,” he said.

“Doc,” Joe said, “what if the radiation gets heavy and you pass out? What do we do then?”

Rusty considered this. “If I’m still close, drag me out of there. But not you, Norrie. Only the guys.”

“Why not me?” she asked.

“Because you might like to have kids someday. Ones with only two eyes and all the limbs attached in the right places.”

“Right. I’m totally here,” Norrie said.

“For the rest of you, short-term exposure should be okay. But I mean very short term. If I should go down halfway up the ridge or actually in the orchard, leave me.”

“Dat’s harsh, Doc.”

“I don’t mean for good,” Rusty said. “You’ve got more lead roll back at the store, don’t you?”

“Yeah. We should have brought it.”

“I agree, but you can’t think of everything. If worst comes to worst, get the rest of the lead roll, stick pieces in the windows of whatever you’re driving, and scoop me up. Hell, by then I might be on my feet again and walking toward town.”

“Yeah. Or still layin knocked out an’ gettin a lethal dose.”

“Look, Rommie, we’re probably worrying about nothing. I think the wooziness—the actual passing-out, if you’re a kid—is like the other Dome-related phenomena. You feel it once, then you’re okay.”

“You could be bettin your life on dat.”

“We’ve got to start placing bets at some point.”

“Good luck,” Joe said, and extended his fist through the window.

Rusty pounded it lightly, then did the same with Norrie and Benny. Rommie also extended his fist. “What’s good for the kids is good enough for me.”

13

Twenty yards beyond the place where Rusty had had the vision of the dummy in the stovepipe hat, the clicks from the Geiger counter mounted to a staticky roar. He saw the needle standing at +400, just into the red.

He pulled over and hauled out gear he would have preferred not to put on. He looked back at the others. “A word of warning,” he said. “And I’m talking to you in particular, Mr. Benny Drake. If you laugh, you’re walking home.”

“I won’t laugh,” Benny said, but in short order they were all laughing, including Rusty himself. He took off his jeans, then pulled a pair of football practice pants up over his undershorts. Where pads on the thighs and buttocks should have gone, he stuffed precut pieces of lead roll. Then he donned a pair of catcher’s shinguards and curved more lead roll over them. This was followed by a lead collar to shield his thyroid gland, and a lead apron to shield his testes. It was the biggest one they had, and hung all the way down to the bright orange shinguards. He had considered hanging another apron over his back (looking ridiculous was better than dying of lung cancer, in his view), and had decided against it. He had already pushed his weight to over three hundred pounds. And radiation didn’t curve. If he faced the source, he thought he’d be okay.

Well. Maybe.

To this point, Rommie and the kids had managed to restrict themselves to discreet chuckles and a few strangulated giggles. Control wavered when Rusty stuffed a size XL bathing cap with two pieces of lead roll and pulled it down over his head, but it wasn’t until he yanked on the elbow-length gloves and added the goggles that they lost it entirely.