'Anyway, four tanks in that little red wagon of mine I thought I could manage, and I hadn't gone but a quarter of a mile before I started pullin on the first one. Had to, don'tcha see.'
Jackie Wettington asked, 'Did you know we were out here?'
'No, ma'am. It was high ground, that's all, and I knew my canned air wouldn't last forever. I didn't guess about you, and I didn't guess about those fans, either. It was just a case of nowhere else to go.'
'What took you so long?' Pete Freeman asked. 'It can't be much more than three miles between God Creek and here.'
'Well, that's a funny thing,' Sam said. 'I was comin up the road - you know, Black Ridge Road - and I got over the bridge okay... still suckin on the first tank, although it was gettin almighty hot, and... say! Did you folks see that dead bear? The one that looked like it bashed its own brains out on a phone-pole?'
'We saw it,' Rusty said. 'Let me guess. A little way past the bear, you got woozy and passed out.'
'How'd you know that?'
'We came that way' Rusty said, 'and there's some kind of force working out there. It seems to hit kids and old people hardest.'
'I ain't that old,' Sam said, sounding offended.'I just went white-hair early, like my mom.'
'How long were you knocked out?' Barbie asked.
'Well, I don't wear no watch, but it was dark when I finally got goin again, so it was quite awhile. I woke up once on account of I couldn't hardly breathe, switched to one of the fresh tanks, and went back to sleep again. Crazy, huh? And the dreams I had! Like a three-ring circus! Last time I woke up I was really awake. It was dark, and I went on to another tank. Makin the switch wasn't a bit hard, because it wasn't really dark. Shoulda been, shoulda been darker'n a tomcat's ass**le with all the soot that fire flang on the Dome, but there's a bright patch down there where I laid up. You can't see it in daylight, but at night it's like about a billion fireflies.'
'The glow-belt, we call it,'Joe said. He and Norrie and Benny were bunched together. Benny was coughing into his hand.
'Good name for it,' Sam said approvingly. 'Anyway, I knew somebody was up here, because by then I could hear those fans and see the lights.' He nodded toward the encampment on the other side of the Dome. 'Didn't know if I was going to make it before my air ran out - that hill's a bugger and I sucked up the oh-two like nobody's business - but I did.'
He was looking curiously at Cox.
'Hey there, Colonel Klink, I can see your breath. You best either put on a coat or come over here where it's warm.' He cackled, showing a few surviving teeth.
'It's Cox, not Klink, and I'm fine.'
Julia asked, 'What did you dream, Sam?'
'Funny you should ask,' he said, 'because there's only one I can remember out of the whole bunch, and that was about you. You was layin on the bandstand in the Common, and you was cryin.'
Julia squeezed Barbie's hand, and hard, but her eyes never left Sam's face. 'How did you know it was me?'
'Because you was covered with newspapers,' Sam said. 'Issues of the Democrat. You was huggin em against you like you was naked underneath, beggin your pardon, but you asked. Ain't that just about the funniest dream you ever heard?'
Cox's walkie-talkie beeped three times: break-break-break. He took it off his belt. 'What is it? Talk to me fast, I'm busy over here.'
They all heard the voice that returned: 'We have a survivor on the south side, Colonel. Repeat: We have a survivor!
8
As the sun came up on the morning of October twenty-eighth, 'surviving' was all the last member of the Dinsmore family could claim. OUie lay with his body pressed against the bottom of the Dome, gasping in just enough air from the big fans on the other side to stay alive.
It had been a race just to get enough of the Dome clear on his side before the remaining oxygen in the tank ran out. It was the one he'd left on the floor when he crawled under the potatoes. He remembered wondering if it would explode. It hadn't, and that was a very good thing for Oliver H. Dinsmore. If it had, he would now be lying dead under a burial mound of russets and long whites.
He had knelt on his side of the Dome, digging off cakes of black) crud, aware that some of the stuff was all that remained of humain beings. It was impossible to forget when he was being repeatedly stabbed by fragments of bone. Without Private Ames's steady encouragement, he was sure he would have given up. But Ames wouldn't give up, just kept hectoring him to dig, goddammit, dig that shit clear, cow-kid, you got to do it so the fans can work.
Ollie thought he hadn't given up because Ames didn't know his name. Ollie had lived with the kids at school calling him shitkicker and titpuller, but he was goddamned if he was going to die listening to some cracker from South Carolina call him cow-kid.
The fans had started up with a roar, and he had felt the first faint gusts of air on his overheated skin. He tore the mask off his face and pressed his mouth and nose directly against the dirty surface of the Dome. Then, gasping and coughing out soot, he continued scraping at the plated char. He could see Ames on the other side, down on his hands and knees with his head cocked like a man trying to peer into a mousehole.
'That's it!' he shouted. 'We got two more fans we're bringin up. Don't you give up on me, cow-kid! Don't you quit!'
'Ollie,' he had gasped.
'What?'
'Name's... Ollie. Stop calling me... cow-kid.'
'Ah'll call you Ollie from now until doomsday, if you just keep clearin a space for those fans to work.'
Ollie's lungs somehow managed to suck in just enough of what was seeping through the Dome to keep him alive and conscious. He watched the world lighten through his slot in the soot. The light helped, too, although it hurt his heart to see the rose-glow of dawn dirtied by the film of filth that still remained on his side of the Dome. The light was good, because in here everything was dark and scorched and hard and silent.