by Stephen King
"What if the air doesn't clear? The TV said--"
"Oh dear, the sky is falling, oh dear, the sky is falling!" Big Jim declaimed in a strange (and strangely disturbing) falsetto. "They've been saying it for years, haven't they? The scientists and the bleeding-heart liberals. World War III! Nuclear reactors melting down to the center of the earth! Y2K computer freezes! The end of the ozone layer! Melting ice caps! Killer hurricanes! Global warming! Chickendirt weak-sister atheists who won't trust in the will of a loving, caring God! Who refuse to believe there is such a thing as a loving, caring God!"
Big Jim pointed a greasy but adamant finger at the younger man.
"Contrary to the beliefs of the secular humanists, the sky is not falling. They can't help the yellow streak that runs up their backs, son--'the guilty man flees where none pursueth,' you know, book of Leviticus--but that doesn't change God's truth: those who believe on Him shall not tire, but shall mount up with wings as eagles--book of Isaiah. That's basically smog out there. It'll just take awhile to clear out."
But two hours later, at just past four o'clock on that Friday afternoon, a shrill queep-queep-queep sound came from the alcove that held the fallout shelter's mechanical support system.
"What's that?" Carter asked.
Big Jim, now slumped on the couch with his eyes partly closed (and sardine grease on his jowls), sat up and listened. "Air purifier," he said. "Kind of like a big Ionic Breeze. We've got one of those in the car showroom down at the store. Good gadget. Not only does it keep the air nice and sweet, it stops those static electricity shocks you tend to get in cold wea--"
"If the air in town's clearing, why did the air purifier start up?"
"Why don't you go upstairs, Carter? Crack the door a little bit and see how things are. Would that ease your mind?"
Carter didn't know if it would or not, but he knew just sitting here was making him feel squirrelly. He mounted the stairs.
As soon as he was gone, Big Jim got up himself and went to the line of drawers between the stove and the little refrigerator. For such a big man, he moved with surprising speed and quiet. He found what he was looking for in the third drawer. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure he was still alone, then helped himself.
On the door at the top of the stairs, Carter was confronted by a rather ominous sign:
DO YOU NEED TO CHECK THE RADIATION COUNT?
THINK!!!
Carter thought. And the conclusion he came to was that Big Jim was almost certainly full of shit about the air clearing out. Those folks lined up in front of the fans proved that the air exchange between Chester's Mill and the outside world was almost nil.
Still, it wouldn't do any harm to check.
At first the door wouldn't budge. Panic, sparked by dim thoughts of being buried alive, made him push harder. This time the door moved just a little. He heard bricks falling and lumber scraping. Maybe he could open it wider, but there was no reason to. The air coming in through the inch-wide gap he'd opened wasn't air at all, but something that smelled like the inside of an exhaust pipe when the motor it was attached to was running. He didn't need any fancy instruments to tell him that two or three minutes outside the shelter would kill him.
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 b
ackground 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 leatherheads--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 coughing. "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.
