'We won't,' Barbie said. 'They'll figure something out.'
Joe shook his head. 'They won't. And you know it. Because they're outside. Nobody outside can help us.' He looked over the blackened wasteland where there had been a town the day before and laughed - a hoarse, croaking sound that was worse because there was actually some amusement in it. 'Chester's Mill has been a town since 1803 - we learned that in school. Over two hundred years. And a week to wipe it off the face of the earth. One f**king week is all it took. How about that, Colonel Barbara?'
Barbie couldn't think of a thing to say.
Joe covered his mouth, coughed. Behind them, the fans roared and roared. 'I'm a smart kid. You know that? I mean, I'm not bragging, but... I'm smart.'
Barbie thought of the video feed the kid had set up near the site ojf the missile strike. 'No argument, Joe.'
'In a Spielberg movie, it's the smart kid who'd come up with the last-minute solution, isn't that right?'
Barbie felt Julia stir again. Both eyes were open now, and she was regarding Joe gravely.
Tears were trickling down the boy's cheeks.'Some Spielberg kid I turned out to be. If we were in Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs would eat us for sure.'
'If only they'd get tired,'Julia said dreamily.
Huh?' Joe blinked at her.
'The leatherheads. The leatherhead children. Kids are supposed to get tired of their games and go on to something else. Or' - she coughed hard - 'or their parents call them home for dinner.'
'Maybe they don't eat,'Joe said gloomily.'Maybe they don't have parents, either.'
CHAPTER 34
'Or maybe time is different for them,'Barbie said.'In their world, maybe they only just sat down around their version of the box. For them the game might only be starting. We don't even know for sure they're children.'
Piper Libby joined them. She was flushed, and her hair was sticking to her cheeks. 'They're kids,' she said. How do you know?' Barbie asked.
'I just do.' She smiled. 'They're the God I stopped believing in about three years ago. God turned out to be a bunch of bad little kids playing Interstellar X-Box. Isn't that funny?' Her smile widened, and then she burst into tears.
Julia was looking toward the box with its flashing purple light. Her face was thoughtful and a little dreamy.
14
It's Saturday night in Chester's Mill. That's the night the Eastern Star ladies used to meet (and after the meeting they'd often go to Henrietta Clavard's house and drink wine and break out their best dirty jokes). It's the night when Peter Randolph and his buddies used to play poker (and also break out their best dirty jokes). The night when Stewart and Fern Bowie often went to Lewiston to rent a couple of whores at a pu**y-parlor on Lower Lisbon Street. The night when the Reverend Lester Coggins used to hold teen prayer meetings in the parsonage hall at Holy Redeemer and Piper Libby used to host teen dances in the basement of the Congo Church. The night when Dipper's used to roar until one (and around twelve-thirty the crowd would begin chanting drunkenly for their anthem, 'Dirty Water,' a song all bands from Boston know well).The night when Howie and Brenda Perkins used to walk, hand-in-hand, on the Town Common, saying hello to the other couples they knew. The night when Alden Dinsmore, his wife, Shelley, and their two sons had been known to play catch by the light of a full moon. In Chester's Mill (as in most small towns where they all support the team), Saturday nights were usually the best nights, made for dancing and f**king and dreaming. Not this one. This one is black and seemingly endless. The wind has died. The poisoned air hangs hot and still. Out where Route 119 used to be until the furnace heat boiled it away, OUie Dinsmore lies with his face pressed to his slot in the slag, still holding stubbornly onto life, and only a foot and a half away, Private Clint Ames continues his patient watch. Some bright boy wanted to shine a spotlight on the kid; Ames (supported by Sergeant Groh, not such an ogre after all) managed to keep it from happening, arguing that shining spotlights on sleeping people was what you did to terrorists, not teenage kids who would probably be dead before the sun rose. But Ames has a flashlight, and every now and then he shines it on the kid, making sure that he's still breathing. He is, but each time Ames uses the flashlight again, he expects it to show him that those shallow respirations have stopped. Part of him has actually started to hope for that. Part of him has started to accept the truth: no matter how resourceful Ollie Dinsmore has been or how heroically he's struggled, he has no future. Watching him fight on is terrible. Not long before midnight, Private Ames falls asleep himself, sitting up, with the flashlight clutched loosely in one hand.
Steepest thou? Jesus is said to have enquired of Peter. Couldst thou not watch one hour?
To which Chef Bushey might have added, book of Matthew, Sanders.
At just past one o'clock, Rose Twitchell shakes Barbie awake.
'Thurston Marshall is dead,' she says. 'Rusty and my brother are puttirig the body under the ambulance so the little girl won't be too upset when she wakes up.'Then she adds: 'If she wakes up. Alice is sick too.'
'We're all sick now,' Julia says. 'All except Sam and that dopey little baby.'
Rusty and Twitch hurry back from the huddle of vehicles, collapse in front of one of the fans, and begin breathing in large, whooping gasps.: Twitch starts coughing and Rusty shoves him even closer to the air, so hard that Twitch's forehead strikes the Dome. They all hear the bonk.
Rose has not quite finished her inventory. 'Benny Drake's bad too.' She lowers her voice to a whisper. 'Ginny says he may not last until sunup. If only there was something we could do.'
Barbie doesn't reply. Neither does Julia, who is once more looking in thej direction of a box which, although less than fifty square inches in area and not even an inch thick, cannot be budged. Her eyes are distant, speculative.