by Stephen King
The question was, what was he going to tell Rennie?
Nothing, the cold voice of the survivor inside suggested. Hearing something like that will only make him worse. Harder to deal with.
And what exactly did that mean? What did it matter, if they were going to die in the fallout shelter when the generator ran out of fuel? If that was the case, what did anything matter?
He went back down the stairs. Big Jim was sitting on the sofa. “Well?”
“Pretty bad,” Carter said.
“But breathable, right?”
“Well, yeah. But it’d make you damn sick. We better wait, boss.”
“Of course we better wait,” Big Jim said, as if Carter had suggested otherwise. As if Carter were the biggest fool in the universe. “But we’ll be fine, that’s the point. God will take care. He always does. In the meantime, we’ve got good air down here, it’s not too hot, and there’s plenty to eat. Why don’t you see what there is for sweets, son? Candybars and such? I’m still feeling peckish.”
I’m not your son, your son is dead, Carter thought … but didn’t say. He went into the bunkroom to see if there were any candybars on the shelves in there.
5
Around ten o’clock that night, Barbie fell into a troubled sleep with Julia close beside him, their bodies spooned together. Junior Rennie danced through his dreams: Junior standing outside his cell in The Coop. Junior with his gun. And this time there would be no rescue because the air outside had turned to poison and everyone was dead.
These dreams finally slipped away, and he slept more deeply, his head—and Julia’s—cocked toward the Dome and the fresh air seeping through it. It was enough for life, but not enough for ease.
Something woke him around two o’clock in the morning. He looked through the smudged Dome at the muted lights of the Army encampment on the other side. Then the sound came again. It was coughing, low and harsh and desperate.
A flashlight gleamed off to his right. Barbie got up as quietly as he could, not wanting to wake Julia, and walked to the light, stepping over others who lay sleeping in the grass. Most had stripped down to their underwear. The sentries ten feet away were bundled up in duffle coats and gloves, but over here it was hotter than ever.
Rusty and Ginny were kneeling beside Ernie Calvert. Rusty had a stethoscope around his neck and an oxygen mask in his hand. It was attached to a small red bottle marked CRH AMBULANCE DO NOT REMOVE ALWAYS REPLACE. Norrie and her mother looked on anxiously, their arms around each other.
“Sorry he woke you,” Joanie said. “He’s sick.”
“How sick?” Barbie asked.
Rusty shook his head. “I don’t know. It sounds like bronchitis or a bad cold, but of course it’s not. It’s bad air. I gave him some from the ambo, and it helped for awhile, but now …” He shrugged. “And I don’t like the sound of his heart. He’s been under a lot of stress, and he’s not a young man anymore.”
“You have no more oxygen?” Barbie asked. He pointed to the red bottle, which looked quite a lot like the kind of fire extinguisher people keep in their kitchen utility closets and always forget to recharge. “That’s it ?”
Thurse Marshall joined them. In the beam of the flashlight he looked grim and tired. “There’s one more, but we agreed—Rusty, Ginny, and me—to save it for the little kids. Aidan’s started to cough too. I moved him as close to the Dome—and the fans—as I could, but he’s still coughing. We’ll start giving Aidan, Alice, Judy, and Janelle the remaining air in rationed whiffs when they wake up. Maybe if the officers brought more fans—”
“No matter how much fresh air they blow at us,” Ginny said, “only so much comes through. And no matter how close to the Dome we get, we’re still breathing in that crap. And the people who are hurting are exactly the ones you’d expect.”
“The oldest and the youngest,” Barbie said.
“Go back and lie down, Barbie,” Rusty said. “Save your strength. There’s nothing you can do here.”
“Can you?”
“Maybe. There’s also nasal decongestant in the ambo. And epinephrine, if it comes to that.”
Barbie crawled back along the Dome with his head turned to the fans—they were all doing this now, without thinking—and was appalled by how tired he felt when he reached Julia. His heart was pounding and he was out of breath.
Julia was awake. “How bad is he?”
“I don’t know,” Barbie admitted, “but it can’t be good. They were giving him oxygen from the ambulance, and he didn’t wake up.”
“Oxygen! Is there more? How much?”
He explained, and was sorry to see the light in her eyes dim a little.
She took his hand. Her fingers were sweaty but cold. “This is like being trapped in a mine cave-in.”
They were sitting now, facing each other, shoulders leaning against the Dome. The faintest of breezes sighed between them. The steady roar of the Air Max fans had become background noise; they raised their voices to speak over it, but otherwise didn’t notice it at all.
We’d notice it if it stopped, Barbie thought. For a few minutes, anyway. Then we wouldn’t notice anything, ever again.
She smiled wanly. “Quit worrying about me, if that’s what you’re doing. I’m okay for a middle-aged Republican lady who can’t quite catch her breath. At least I managed to get myself rogered one more time. Right, good, and proper, too.”
Barbie smiled back. “It was my pleasure, believe me.”
“What about the pencil nuke they’re going to try on Sunday? What do you think?”
“I don’t think. I only hope.”
“And how high are your hopes?”
He didn’t want to tell her the truth, but the truth was what she deserved. “Based on everything that’s happened and the little we know about the creatures running the box, not very.”
“Tell me you haven’t given up.”
“That I can do. I’m not even as scared as I probably should be. I think because … it’s insidious. I’ve even gotten used to the stench.”
“Really?”
He laughed. “No. How about you? Scared?”
“Yes, but sad, mostly. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a gasp.” She coughed again, curling a fist to her mouth. Barbie could hear other people doing the same thing. One would be the little boy who was now Thurston Marshall’s little boy. He’ll get some better stuff in the morning, Barbie thought, and then remembered how Thurston had put it: Air in rationed whiffs. That was no way for a kid to have to breathe.
No way for anyone to have to breathe.
Julia spat into the grass, then faced him again. “I can’t believe we did this to ourselves. The things running the box—the leather-heads—set up the situation, but I think they’re only a bunch of kids watching the fun. Playing the equivalent of a video game, maybe. They’re outside. We’re inside, and we did it to ourselves.”
“You’ve got enough problems without beating yourself up on that score,” Barbie said. “If anyone’s responsible, it’s Rennie. He’s the one who set up the drug lab, and he’s the one who started raiding propane from every source in town. He’s also the one who sent men out there and caused some sort of confrontation, I’m sure of it.”
“But who elected him?” Julia asked. “Who gave him the power to do those things?”
“Not you. Your newspaper campaigned against him. Or am I wrong?”
“You’re right,” she said, “but only about the last eight years or so. At first the Democrat—me, in other words—thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. By the time I found out what he really was, he was entrenched. And he had poor smiling stupid Andy Sanders out front to run interference for him.”
“You still can’t blame—”
“I can and do. If I’d known that pugnacious, incompetent sonofabitch might end up in charge during an actual crisis, I’d have … have … I’d have drowned him like a kitten in a sack.”
He laughed, then started co
ughing. “You sound less like a Republican all the ti—” he began, then broke off.
“What?” she asked, and then she heard it, too. Something was rattling and squeaking in the dark. It got closer and they saw a shambling figure tugging a child’s wagon.
“Who’s there?” called Dougie Twitchell.
When the shambling newcomer answered, his voice was slightly muffled. By an oxygen mask of his own, it turned out.
“Well, thank God,” Sloppy Sam said. “I had me a little nap side of the road, and I thought I’d run out of air before I got up here. But here I am. Just in time, too, because I’m almost tapped out.”
6
The Army encampment at Route 119 in Motton was a sad place that early Saturday morning. Only three dozen military personnel and one Chinook remained. A dozen men were loading in the big tents and a few leftover Air Max fans that Cox had ordered to the south side of the Dome as soon as the explosion had been reported. The fans had never been used. By the time they arrived, there was no one to appreciate the scant air they could push through the barrier. The fire was out by six PM, strangled by lack of fuel and oxygen, but everyone on the Chester’s Mill side was dead.
The medical tent was being taken down and rolled up by a dozen men. Those not occupied with that task had been set to that most ancient of Army jobs: policing up the area. It was make-work, but no one on the shit patrol minded. Nothing could make them forget the nightmare they had seen the previous afternoon, but grubbing up the wrappers, cans, bottles, and cigarette butts helped a little. Soon enough it would be dawn and the big Chinook would fire up. They’d climb aboard and go somewhere else. The members of this ragtag crew absolutely could not wait.
One of them was Pfc Clint Ames, from Hickory Grove, South Carolina. He had a green plastic Hefty bag in one hand and was moving slowly through the beaten-down grass, picking up the occasional discarded sign or flattened Coke can so if that hardass Sergeant Groh glanced over he’d look like he was working. He was nearly asleep on his feet, and at first he thought the knocking he heard (it sounded like knuckles on a thick Pyrex dish) was part of a dream. It almost had to be, because it seemed to be coming from the other side of the Dome.
He yawned and stretched with one hand pressing into the small of his back. As he was doing this, the knocking resumed. It really was coming from behind the blackened wall of the Dome.
Then, a voice. Weak and disembodied, like the voice of a ghost. It gave him the chills.
“Is anybody there? Can anybody hear me? Please … I’m dying.”
Christ, did he know that voice? It sounded like—
Ames dropped his litter bag and ran to the Dome. He put his hands on its blackened, still-warm surface. “Cow-kid? Is that you?”
I’m crazy, he thought. It can’t be. No one could have lived through that firestorm.
“AMES!” Sergeant Groh bawled. “What the hell are you doing over there?”
He was about to turn away when the voice behind the charred surface came again. “It’s me. Don’t …” There was a ragged series of barking coughs. “Don’t go. If you’re there, Private Ames, don’t go.”
Now a hand appeared. It was as ghostly as the voice, the fingers smeared with soot. It was rubbing a clean place on the inside of the Dome. A moment later a face appeared. At first Ames didn’t recognize the cow-kid. Then he realized the boy was wearing an oxygen mask.
“I’m almost out of air,” the cow-kid wheezed. “Dial’s in the red. Has been … for the last half hour.”
Ames stared into the cow-kid’s haunted eyes, and the cow-kid stared back. Then a single imperative rose in Ames’s mind: he couldn’t let the cow-kid die. Not after all he had survived … although how he had survived was impossible for Ames to imagine.
“Kid, listen to me. Y’all drop down on your knees and—”
“Ames, you useless fuckdub!” Sergeant Groh hollered, striding over. “Stop goldbricking and get busy! I have zero patience for your weakass shit tonight!”
Pfc Ames ignored him. He was entirely fixed on the face that appeared to be staring at him from behind a grimy glass wall. “Drop down and scrape the gluck off the bottom! Do it now, kid, right now!”
The face dropped from view, leaving Ames to hope the cow-kid was doing as he’d been told, and hadn’t just passed out.
Sergeant Groh’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Are you deaf? I told you—”
“Get the fans, Sergeant! We have to get the fans!”
“What are you talking ab—”
Ames screamed into the dreaded Sergeant Groh’s face. “There’s somebody alive in there!”
7
Only a single oxygen tank remained in the red wagon by the time Sloppy Sam arrived at the refugee camp by the Dome, and the needle on the dial was resting just above zero. He made no objection when Rusty took the mask and clapped it over Ernie Calvert’s face, only crawled to the Dome next to where Barbie and Julia were sitting. There the new arrival got down on all fours and breathed deeply. Horace the Corgi, sitting at Julia’s side, looked at him with interest.
Sam rolled over on his back. “It ain’t much, but better’n what I had. The last little bit in them tanks never tastes good like it does fresh off the top.”
Then, incredibly, he lit a cigarette.
“Put that out, are you insane?” Julia said.
“Been dyin for one,” Sam said, inhaling with satisfaction. “Can’t smoke around oxygen, you know. Blow y’self up, likely as not. Although there’s people who does it.”
“Might as well let him go,” Rommie said. “It can’t be any worse than the crap we’re breathing. For all we know, the tar and nicotine in his lungs is protectin him.”
Rusty came over and sat down. “That tank’s a dead soldier,” he said, “but Ernie got a few extra breaths from it. He seems to be resting easier now. Thanks, Sam.”
Sam waved it away. “My air’s your air, doc. Or at least it was. Say, can’t you make more with somethin in your ambulance there? The guys who bring my tanks—who did, anyway, before this sack of shit hit the fan—they could make more right in their truck. They had a whatdoyoucallit, pump of some kind.”
“Oxygen extractor,” Rusty said, “and you’re right, we have one on board. Unfortunately, it’s broken.” He showed his teeth in what passed for a grin. “It’s been broken for the last three months.”
“Four,” Twitch said, coming over. He was looking at Sam’s cigarette. “Don’t suppose you got any more of those, do you?”
“Don’t even think about it,” Ginny said.
“Afraid of polluting this tropical paradise with secondary smoke, darlin?” Twitch asked, but when Sloppy Sam held out his battered pack of American Eagles, Twitch shook his head.
Rusty said, “I put in the request for a replacement O2 extractor myself. To the hospital board. They say the budget’s maxed out, but maybe I can get some help from the town. So I send the request to the Board of Selectmen.”
“Rennie,” Piper Libby said.
“Rennie,” Rusty agreed. “I get a form letter back saying my request will be taken up at the budget meeting in November. So I guess we’ll see then.” He flapped his hands at the sky and laughed.
Others were gathering around now, looking at Sam with curiosity. And at his cigarette with horror.
“How’d you get here, Sam?” Barbie asked.
Sam was more than happy to tell his tale. He began with how, as a result of the emphysema diagnosis, he’d wound up getting regular oxygen deliveries thanks to THE MEDICAL, and how sometimes the full tanks backed up on him. He told about hearing the explosion, and what he’d seen when he went outside.
“I knew what was gonna happen as soon as I saw how big it was,” he said. His audience now included the military on the other side. Cox, dressed in boxer shorts and a khaki undershirt, was among them. “I seen bad fires before, back when I was workin in the woods. Couple of times we had to drop everything and just outrun em, and if one of those old International Ha
rvester trucks we had in those days hadda bogged down, we never woulda. Crown fires is the worst, because they make their own wind. I seen right away the same was gonna happen with this one. Somethin almighty big exploded. What was it?”
“Propane,” Rose said.
Sam stroked his white-stubbled chin. “Ayuh, but propane wasn’t all. There was chemicals, too, because some of those flames was green.
“If it had come my way, I woulda been done. You folks too. But it sucked south instead. Shape of the land had somethin to do with that, I shouldn’t wonder. And the riverbed, too. Anyways, I knew what was gonna happen, and I got the tanks out of the oxygen bar—”
“The what?” Barbie asked.
Sam took a final drag on his cigarette, then butted it in the dirt. “Oh, that’s just the name I give to the shed where I kep’ them tanks. Anyway, I had five full ones—”
“Five!” Thurston Marshall almost moaned.
“Ayuh,” Sam said cheerfully, “but I never could have drug five. I’m gettin on in years, you know.”
“Couldn’t you have found a car or a truck?” Lissa Jamieson asked.
“Ma’am, I lost my drivin license seven years ago. Or maybe it was eight. Too many DUIs. If I got caught behind the wheel of anything bigger’n a go-kart again, they’d put me in County and throw away the key.”
Barbie considered pointing out the fundamental flaw in this, but why bother wasting breath when breath was now so hard to come by?
“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.”
