Horace was first to feel the fresh air, because he was lowest to the ground. He began to bark. Then Joe felt it: a breeze, startlingly cold, against his sweaty back. He was leaning against the Dome, and the Dome was moving. Moving
“What—? Joey, what’s happening?”
Joe knew, but was too stunned to tell her. He could feel a cool sliding sensation against his back, like an endless sheet of glass being raised.
Horace was barking madly now, his back bowed, his snout on the ground. It was his
Heaven!
14
On the south side of the Dome, Pfc Clint Ames was also dozing. He sat cross-legged on the soft shoulder of Route 119 with a blanket wrapped around him Indian-style. The air suddenly darkened, as if the bad dreams flitting through his head had assumed physical form. Then he coughed himself awake.
Soot was swirling up around his booted feet and settling on the legs of his khaki everydays. Where in God’s name was it coming from? All the burning had been inside. Then he saw. The Dome was going up like a giant windowblind. It was impossible—it went miles down as well as up, everybody knew that—but it was happening.
Ames didn’t hesitate. He crawled forward on his hands and knees and seized Ollie Dinsmore by the arms. For a moment he felt the rising Dome scrape the middle of his back, glassy and hard, and there was time to think
For a moment he thought he was hauling a corpse.
Ollie began coughing, then leaned over and vomited weakly. Ames held him while he did it. The others were running toward them now, shouting jubilantly, Sergeant Groh in the forefront.
Ollie puked again. “Don’t call me cow-kid,” he whispered.
“Get an ambulance!” Ames shouted. “We need an ambulance!”
“Nah, we’ll take him to Central Maine General in the helicopter,” Groh said. “You ever been in a helicopter, kid?”
Ollie, his eyes dazed, shook his head. Then he puked on Sergeant Groh’s shoes.
Groh beamed and shook Ollie’s filthy hand. “Welcome back to the United States, son. Welcome back to the world.”
Ollie put an arm around Ames’s neck. He was aware that he was passing out. He tried to hold on long enough to say thank you, but he didn’t make it. The last thing he was aware of before the darkness took him again was the southern soldier kissing him on the cheek.
15
On the north end, Horace was the first one out. He raced directly to Colonel Cox and began to dance around his feet. Horace had no tail, but it didn’t matter; his entire hind end was wig-wagging.
“I’ll be damned,” Cox said. He picked the Corgi up and Horace began to lick his face frantically.
The survivors stood together on their side (the line of demarcation was clear in the grass, bright on one side and listless gray on the other), beginning to understand but not quite daring to believe. Rusty, Linda, the Little Js, Joe McClatchey and Norrie Calvert, with their mothers standing to either side of them. Ginny, Gina Buffalino, and Harriet Bigelow with their arms around each other. Twitch was holding his sister Rose, who was sobbing and cradling Little Walter. Piper, Jackie, and Lissa were holding hands. Pete Freeman and Tony Guay, all that remained of the
They watched as the Dome’s dirty surface rose swiftly into the air. The fall foliage on the other side was heartbreaking in its brilliance.
Sweet fresh air lifted their hair and dried the sweat on their skin.
“For we saw as if through a glass darkly,” Piper Libby said. She was weeping. “But now we see as if face to face.”
Horace jumped from Colonel Cox’s arms and began turning figure eights through the grass, yapping, sniffing, and trying to pee on everything at once.
The survivors looked unbelievingly up at the bright sky arching over a late fall Sunday morning in New England. And above them, the dirty barrier that had held them prisoner still rose, moving faster and faster, shrinking to a line like a long dash of pencil on a sheet of blue paper.
A bird swooped through the place where the Dome had been. Alice Appleton, still being carried by Rommie, looked up at it and laughed.
16
Barbie and Julia knelt with the tire between them, taking alternate breaths from the spindle-straw. They watched as the box began to rise again. It went slowly at first, and seemed to hover a second time at a height of about sixty feet, as if doubtful. Then it shot straight up at a speed far too fast for the human eye to follow; it would have been like trying to see a bullet in flight. The Dome was either flying upward or somehow being
A breeze came beating toward them. Barbie marked its progress in the rippling grass. He shook Julia by the shoulder and pointed dead north. The filthy gray sky was blue again, and almost too bright to look at. The trees had come into bright focus.
Julia raised her head from the spindle and breathed.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good—” Barbie began, but then the breeze arrived. He saw it lift Julia’s hair and felt it drying the sweat on his grime-streaked face, as gentle as a lover’s palm.
Julia was coughing again. He pounded her back, taking his own first breath of the air as he did so. It still stank and clawed at his throat, but it was breathable. The bad air was blowing south as fresh air from the TR-90 side of the Dome—what
Or from one leatherhead girl.
Barbie and Julia embraced next to the black square of ground where the box had been. Nothing would grow there, not ever again.
17
“Sam!” Julia cried. “We have to get Sam!”
