Under the Dome

When they were ready, Barbie, Julia, and Sloppy Sam hugged and kissed everybody, even the kids. There was little hope in the faces of the nearly two dozen exiles who would remain behind. Barbie tried to tell himself it was just because they were exhausted and now chronically short of breath, but he knew better. These were goodbye kisses.

“Good luck, Colonel Barbara,” Cox said.

Barbie gave him a brief nod of acknowledgment, then turned to Rusty. Rusty who really mattered, because he was under the Dome. “Don’t give up hope, and don’t let them give up hope. If this doesn’t work, take care of them as long as you can and as well as you can.”

“I hear you. Give it your best shot.”

Barbie tilted his head toward Julia. “It’s mostly her shot, I think. And hell, maybe we’ll make it back even if it doesn’t work.”

“Sure you will,” Rusty said. He sounded hearty, but what he believed was in his eyes.

Barbie slapped him on the shoulder, then joined Sam and Julia at the Dome, once more taking deep breaths of the fresh air that came trickling through. To Sam he said, “Are you sure you really want to do this?”

“Ayuh. I got somethin to make up for.”

“What would that be, Sam?” Julia asked.

“I druther not say.” He smiled a little. “Specially not to the town newspaper lady.”

“You ready?” Barbie asked Julia.

“Yes.” She grabbed his hand, gave it one brief hard squeeze. “As much as I can be.”

6

Rommie and Jackie Wettington stationed themselves at the rear doors of the van. When Barbie shouted “Go!” Jackie opened the doorgate and Rommie threw the two Prius tires inside. Barbie and Julia hurled themselves in directly after, and the doors were slammed behind them a split-second later. Sam Verdreaux, old and booze-raddled but still spry as a cricket, was already behind the Odyssey’s wheel and revving the engine.

The air inside the van stank of what was now the outside world—an aroma that was charred wood on top and a painty, turpentine-y stench beneath—but it was still better than what they had been breathing at the Dome, even with dozens of fans blasting.

Won’t be better for long, Barbie thought. Not with three of us sucking it up.

Julia grabbed the distinctive yellow-and-black Best Buy sack and turned it over. What fell out was a plastic cylinder with the words PERFECT ECHO on it. And, beneath that: 50 RECORDABLE CDS. She began to pick at the sealed cellophane overwrap with no immediate success. Barbie reached for his pocketknife, and his heart sank. The knife wasn’t there. Of course not. It was now just a hunk of slag under whatever remained of the PD.

“Sam! Please tell me you have a pocketknife!”

Without a word, Sam tossed one back. “That was my dad’s. I been carryin it my whole life, and I want it back.”

The knife’s sides were wood-inlay rubbed almost smooth with age, but when he opened it, the single blade was sharp. It would work on the overwrap, and it would make nice neat punctures in the tires.

“Hurry up!” Sam yelled, and revved the Odyssey’s engine harder.

“We ain’t goin till you tell me you got the right thing, and I doubt the engine’ll run forever in this air!”

Barbie slit the overwrap. Julia stripped it away. When she rotated the plastic cylinder half a turn to the left, it came off the base. The blank CDs that had been meant for Rusty Everett’s birthday sat on a black plastic spindle. She dumped the CDs on the floor of the van, then closed her fist around the spindle. Her mouth tightened with effort.

“Let me do tha—” he said, but then she snapped it off.

“Girls are strong, too. Especially when they’re scared to death.”

“Is it hollow? If it isn’t, we’re back to square one.”

She held the spindle up to her face. Barbie looked down one end and saw her blue eye staring back from the other. “Go, Sam,” he said. “We’re in business.”

“You sure it’ll work?” Sam shouted back, dropping the van’s transmission into drive.

“You bet!” Barbie returned, because How the hell should I know would cheer nobody up. Including himself.

7

The survivors at the Dome watched silently as the van tore down the dirt track that led back to what Norrie Calvert had taken to calling “the flash-box.” The Odyssey dimmed into the hanging smog, became a phantom, and then disappeared.

Rusty and Linda were standing together, each carrying a child. “What do you think, Rusty?” Linda asked.

He said, “I think we need to hope for the best.”

“And prepare for the worst?”

“That too,” he said.

8

They were passing the farmhouse when Sam called back, “We’re goin into the orchard now. You want to hold onto your jockstraps, kiddies, because I ain’t stoppin this bitch even if I rip the undercarriage right out’n it.”

“Go for it,” Barbie said, and then a vicious bump tossed him in the air with his arms wrapped around one of the spare tires. Julia was clutching the other one like a shipwreck victim clutching a life ring. Apple trees flashed by. The leaves looked dirty and dispirited. Most of the fruit had fallen to the ground, shaken free by the wind that had sucked through the orchard after the explosion.

Another tremendous bump. Barbie and Julia went up and came down together, Julia sprawling across Barbie’s lap and still holding onto her tire.

“Where’d you get your license, you old fuck?” Barbie shouted. “Sears and Roebuck?”

“Walmart!” the old man shouted back. “Everything’s cheaper at Wally World!” Then he stopped cackling. “I see it. I see the blinkyass whoremaster. Bright purple light. Gonna pull right up beside it. You wait until I stop before you go carvin on those tires, less you want to tear em wide open.”

A moment later he stamped on the brake and brought the Odyssey to a scrunching halt that sent Barbie and Julia sliding into the back of the rear seat. Now I know what a pinball feels like, Barbie thought.

“You drive like a Boston cabbie!” Julia said indignantly.

“You just make sure you tip”—Sam was stopped by a hard fit of coughing—“twenty percent.” His voice sounded choked.

“Sam?” Julia asked. “Are you all right?”

“Maybe not,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m bleedin somewhere. Could be throat, but it feels deeper. B’lieve I might have ruptured a lung.” Then he was coughing again.

“What can we do?” Julia asked.