Under the Dome

was ten o’clock on a pretty late-fall morning. The sun was shining and melting off the last of a heavy frost. But only a few feet away there was a bubble-world of perpetual twilight, a world where the air was unbreathable and time had ceased to have any meaning. Groh remembered a pond in the local park where he’d grown up. Wilton, Connecticut, that had been. There had been golden carp in the pond, big old things. The kids used to feed them. Until one day when one of the groundskeepers had an accident with some fertilizer, that was. Goodbye fishies. All ten or a dozen of them, floating dead on the surface.

Looking at the dirty sleeping boy on the other side of the Dome, it was impossible not to think of those carp… only a boy was not a fish.

Ames came back, eating something he obviously didn’t want. Not much of a soldier, in Groh’s opinion, but a good kid with a good heart.

Private Ames sat down. Sergeant Groh sat with him. Around noon, they got a report from the north side of the Dome that another of the survivors over there had died. A little boy named Aidan Appleton. Another kid. Groh believed he might have met his mother the day before. He hoped he was wrong about that, but didn’t think he was.

“Who did it?” Ames asked him. “Who wound this shit up, Sarge? And why?”

Groh shook his head. “No idea.”

“It makes no sense!” Ames cried. Beyond them, Ollie stirred, lost his air, and moved his sleeping face once more to the scant breeze seeping through the barrier.

“Don’t wake him up,” Groh said, thinking: If he goes in his sleep, it’ll be better for all of us.

13

By two o’clock all of the exiles were coughing except—incredible but true—Sam Verdreaux, who seemed to be thriving in the bad air, and Little Walter Bushey, who did nothing but sleep and suck the occasional ration of milk or juice. Barbie sat against the Dome with his arm around Julia. Not far away, Thurston Marshall sat beside the covered corpse of little Aidan Appleton, who had died with terrifying suddenness. Thurse, now coughing steadily, was holding Alice on his lap. She had cried herself to sleep. Twenty feet further on, Rusty was huddled with his wife and girls, who had also cried themselves to sleep. Rusty had taken Audrey’s body to the ambulance so the girls wouldn’t have to look at it. He held his breath throughout; even fifteen yards inland from the Dome, the air became choking, deadly. Once he got his wind back, he supposed he should do the same with the little boy. Audrey would be good company for him; she’d always liked kids.

Joe McClatchey plopped down beside Barbie. Now he really did look like a scarecrow. His pale face was dotted with acne and there were circles of bruised-looking purple flesh under his eyes.

“My mom’s sleeping,” Joe said.

“Julia too,” Barbie said, “so keep your voice down.”

Julia opened one eye. “Nah sleepin,” she said, and promptly closed the eye again. She coughed, stilled, then coughed some more.

“Benny’s really sick,” Joe said. “He’s running a fever, like the little boy did before he died.” He hesitated. “My mom’s pretty warm, too. Maybe it’s only because it’s so hot in here, but… I don’t think that’s it. What if she dies? What if we all do?”

“We won’t,” Barbie said. “They’ll figure something out.”

Joe shook his head. “They won’t. And you know it. Because they’re outside. Nobody outside can help us.” He looked over the blackened wasteland where there had been a town the day before and laughed—a hoarse, croaking sound that was worse because there was actually some amusement in it. “Chester’s Mill has been a town since 1803—we learned that in school. Over two hundred years. And a week to wipe it off the face of the earth. One fuckin week is all it took. How about that, Colonel Barbara?”

Barbie couldn’t think of a thing to say.

Joe covered his mouth, coughed. Behind them, the fans roared and roared. “I’m a smart kid. You know that? I mean, I’m not bragging, but… I’m smart.”

Barbie thought of the video feed the kid had set up near the site of the missile strike. “No argument, Joe.”

“In a Spielberg movie, it’s the smart kid who’d come up with the last-minute solution, isn’t that right?”

Barbie felt Julia stir again. Both eyes were open now, and she was regarding Joe gravely.

Tears were trickling down the boy’s cheeks. “Some Spielberg kid I turned out to be. If we were in Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs would eat us for sure.”

“If only they’d get tired,” Julia said dreamily.

“Huh?” Joe blinked at her.

“The leatherheads. The leatherhead children. Kids are supposed to get tired of their games and go on to something else. Or”—she coughed hard—“or their parents call them home for dinner.”

“Maybe they don’t eat,” Joe said gloomily. “Maybe they don’t have parents, either.”

“Or maybe time is different for them,” Barbie said. “In their world, maybe they only just sat down around their version of the box. For them the game might only be starting. We don’t even know for sure they’re children.”

Piper Libby joined them. She was flushed, and her hair was sticking to her cheeks. “They’re kids,” she said.

“How do you know?” Barbie asked.

“I just do.” She smiled. “They’re the God I stopped believing in about three years ago. God turned out to be a bunch of bad little kids playing Interstellar X-Box. Isn’t that funny?” Her smile widened, and then she burst into tears.

Julia was looking toward the box with its flashing purple light. Her face was thoughtful and a little dreamy.

14

It’s Saturday night in Chester’s Mill. That’s the night the Eastern Star ladies used to meet (and after the meeting they’d often go to Henrietta Clavard’s house and drink wine and break out their best dirty jokes). It’s the night when Peter Randolph and his buddies used to play poker (and also break out their best dirty jokes). The night when Stewart and Fern Bowie often went to Lewiston to rent a couple of whores at a pussy-parlor on Lower Lisbon Street. The night when the Reverend Lester Coggins used to hold teen prayer meetings in the parsonage hall at Holy Redeemer and Piper Libby used to host teen dances in the basement of the Congo Church. The night when Dipper’s used to roar until one (and around twelve-thirty the crowd would begin chanting drunkenly for their anthem, “Dirty Water,” a song all bands from Boston know well). The night when Howie and Brenda Perkins used to walk, hand-in-hand, on the Town Common, saying hello to the other couples they knew. The night when Alden Dinsmore, his wife, Shelley, and their two sons had been known to play catch by the light of a full moon. In Chester’s Mill (as in most small towns where they all support the team), Saturday nights were usually the best nights, made for dancing and fucking and dreaming.

Not this one. This one is black and seemingly endless. The wind has died. The poisoned air hangs hot and still. Out where Route 119 used to be until the furnace heat boiled it away, Ollie Dismore lies with his face pressed to his slot in the slag, still holding stubbornly onto life, and only a foot and a half away, Private Clint Ames continues his patient watch. Some bright boy wanted to shine a spotlight on the kid; Ames (supported by Sergeant Groh, not such an ogre after all) managed to keep it from happening, arguing that shining spotlights on sleeping people was what you did to terrorists, not teenage kids who would probably be dead before the sun rose. But Ames has a flashlight, and every now and then he shines it on the kid, making sure that he’s still breathing. He is, but each time