Piper Libby smiled. Tell our fellow homegrown terrorists to arrive between nine and nine thirty tonight. They should come on foot, and by ones - standard French Resistance stuff. No need to advertise what we're doing.'
'Thank you,'Jackie said. 'So much.'
'Not at all. It's my town, too. May I suggest you slip out by the back door?'
11
There was a pile of clean rags in the back of Rommie Burpee's van. Rusty knotted two of them together, fashioning a bandanna he tied over the lower half of his face, but still his nose, throat, and lungs were thick with the stench of dead bear. The first maggots had hatched in its eyes, open mouth, and the meat of its exposed brain.
He stood up, backed away, then reeled a little bit. Rommie grabbed him by the elbow.
'If he passes out, catch him,'Joe said nervously. 'Maybe that thing hits adults further out.'
'It's just the smell,' Rusty said. 'I'm okay now.'
But even away from the bear, the world smelled bad: smoky and heavy, as if the entire town of Chester's Mill had become a large closed room. In addition to the odors of smoke and decaying animal, he could smell rotting plant life and a swampy stench that no doubt arose! from the drying bed of the Prestile. If only there was a wind, he thought, but there was just an occasional pallid puff of breeze that brought more bad smells. To the far west there were clouds - it was probably raining a bitch over in New Hampshire - but when they reached the Dome, the clouds parted like a river dividing at a large outcropping of rock. Rusty had become increasingly doubtful about the possibility of rain under the Dome. He made a note to check some meteorological websites... if he ever got a free moment. Life had become appallingly busy and unsettlingly unstructured.
'Did Br'er Bear maybe die of rabies, doc?' Rommie asked.
'I doubt it. I think it's exactly what the kids said: plain suicide.'
They piled into the van, Rommie behind the wheel, and drove slowly up Black Ridge Road. Rusty had the Geiger counter in his lap. It clucked steadily. He watched the needle rise toward the + 200 mark.
'Stop here, Mr Burpee!' Norrie cried. 'Before you come out of the yroods! If you're gonna pass out, I'd just as soon you didn't do it while you were driving, even at ten miles an hour:
Rommie obediently pulled the van over. 'Jump out, kids. I'm gonna babysit you. The doc's going on by himself.' He turned to Rusty. 'Take the van, but drive slow and stop the second the radiation count gets too high to be safe. Or if you start to feel woozy We'll walk behind you.'
'Be careful, Mr Everett,' Joe said.
Benny added, 'Don't - worry if you pass out and Wilson the van. We'll push you back onto the road when you come to.'
'Thanks,' Rusty said. 'You're all heart and a mile wide.'
'Huh?'
'Never mind.'
Rusty got behind the wheel and closed the driver's-side door.
On the passenger bucket, the Geiger counter clicked. He drove - very slowly - out of the woods. Up ahead, Black Ridge Road rose toward the orchard. At first he didn't see anything out of the ordinary, and had a moment of bone-deep disappointment. Then a bright purple flash hit him in the eyes and he jammed on the brakes in a hurry. Something up there, all right, a bright something amid the scrabble of untended apple trees. Just behind him, in the van's outside mirror, he saw the others stop walking.
'Rusty?' Rommie called. 'Okay?'
'I see it.'
He counted to fifteen, and the purple light flashed again. He was reaching for the Geiger counter when Joe looked in at him through the driver s-side window. The new pimples stood out on his skin like stigmata. 'Do you feel anything? Woozy? Swimmy in the head?'
'No,' Rusty said.
Joe pointed ahead. 'That's where we blacked out. Right there.' Rusty could see scufF-marks in the dirt at 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 lightheaded for a second, me. You kids feel anything?'
They shook their heads. Rusty wasn't surprised. It was like chickenpox: 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 Ronimie and the children, then passed them.
'I don't feel anyth - ' he began, and then it came: not lightheadedness, exactly, but a sense of strangeness and peculiar clarity. Whil￡ 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: 'Whck, 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.