'You're doing it!' Pamela shouts. 'You're doing it!'
Maybe, Henry thinks. Maybe I am. But Christ, the heatl He is reaching for the air-conditioning knob, meaning to turn it all the way to MAX COOL, and that's when the windows implode and the bus fills with fire. Henry thinks, No! No! Not when we're so close!
But when the charred bus charges clear of the smoke, he sees nothing beyond but a black wasteland. The trees have been burned away to glowing stubs and the road itself is a bubbling ditch. Then an overcoat of fire drops over him from behind and Henry Morrison knows no more. 19 skids from the remains of the road and overturns with flames spewing from every broken window. The quickly blackening message on the back reads: SLOW DOWN, FRIEND! WE LOVE OUR CHILDREN!
Ollie Dinsmore sprints to the barn. Wearing Cirampy Tom's oxygen mask around his neck and carrying two tanks with a strength he never knew he had (the second he spied as he cut through the garage), the boy runs for the stairs that will take him down to the potato cellar. There's a ripping, snarling sound from overhead as the roof begins to burn. On the west side of the barn the pumpkins also begin to burn, the smell rich and cloying, like Thanksgiving in hell.
The fire moves toward the southern side of the Dome, racing through the last hundred yards; there is an explosion as Dinsmore's dairy barns are destroyed. Henrietta Clavard regards the oncoming fire and thinks: Well, I'm old. I've had my life. That's more than this poor girl can say.
'Turn around, honey,' she tells Petra, 'and put your head on my bosom.'
Petra Searles turns a tearstained and very young face up to Henrietta's. 'Will it hurt?'
'Only for a second, honey. Close your eyes, and when you open them, you'll be bathing your feet in a cool stream.'
Petra speaks her last words. 'That sounds nice.'
She closes her eyes. Henrietta does the same.The fire takes them. At one second they're there, at the next... gone.
Cox is still close on the other side of the Dome, and the cameras are still rolling from their safe position at the flea-market site. Everyone in America is watching in shocked fascination. The commentators have been stunned to silence, and the only soundtrack is the fire, which has plenty to say.
For a moment Cox can still see the long human snake, although the people who make it up are only silhouettes against the fire. Most of them - like the expatriates on Black Ridge, who are at last making their - way back to the farmhouse and their vehicles - are holding hands. Then the fire boils against the Dome and they are gone. As if to make up for their disappearance, the Dome itself becomes visible: a great charred wall rearing into the sky. It holds most of the heat in, but enough flashes out to turn Cox around and send him running. He tears off his smoking shirt as he goes.
The fire has burned on the diagonal Barbie foresaw, sweeping across Chester's Mill from northwest to southeast. When it dies, it will do so with remarkable quickness. What it has taken is oxygen; what it leaves behind is methane, formaldehyde, hydrochloric acid, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and trace gases equally noxious. Also choking clouds of particulate matter: vaporized houses, trees, and - of course - people.
What it leaves behind is poison.
22
Twenty-eight exiles and two dogs convoyed out to where the Dome bordered on TR-90, known to the oldtimers as Canton. They were crammed into three vans, two cars, and the ambulance. By the time they arrived the day had grown dark and the air had become increasingly hard to breathe.
Barbie jammed on the brakes of Julia's Prius and ran to the Dome, where a concerned Army lieutenant colonel and half a dozen other soldiers stepped forward to meet him. The run was short, but by the time Barbie reached the red band spray-painted on the Dome, he was gasping. The good air was disappearing like water down a sink.
'The fans!' he panted at the lieutenant colonel. 'Turn on the fans!'
Claire McClatchey and Joe spilled out of the department store van, both of them staggering and gasping. The phone company van came next. Ernie Calvert got out, took two steps, and went to his knees. Norrie and her mother tried to help him to his feet. Both 'were crying.
'Colonel Barbara, what happened?' the lieutenant colonel asked. According to the name-strip on his fatigues, he was STRINGFELLOW 'Report.'
'Fuck your report!' Rommie shouted. He was holding a semiconscious child - Aidan Appleton - in his arms. Thurse Marshall staggered along behind him with his arm around Alice, whose sparkle-sprinkled top was sticking to her; she'd retched down her front. 'Fuck your report, just turn on dose fans, you!'
Stringfellow gave the order and the refugees knelt, their hands pressed against the Dome, greedily gasping in the faint breeze of clean air the huge fans were able to force through the barrier.
Behind them, the fire raged.
SURVIVORS
1
Only three hundred and ninety-seven of The Mill's two thousand residents survive the fire, most of them in the northeast quadrant of town. By the time night falls, rendering the smudged darkness inside the Dome complete, there will be a hundred and six.
When the sun comes up on Saturday morning, shining weakly through the only part of the Dome not charred completely black, the population of Chester's Mill is just thirty-two.
2
Ollie slammed the door to the potato cellar before running downstairs. He also flicked the switch that turned on the lights, not knowing if they would still work. They did. As he stumbled down to the barn's basement (chilly now but not for long; he could already feel the heat starting to push in behind him), Ollie remembered the day four years ago when the guys from Ives Electric in Castle Rock backed up to the barn to unload the new Honda generator.
'Overpriced sonofawhore better work right,' Alden had said, chewing on a piece of grass, 'because I'm in hock up to my eyeballs for it.'