by Stephen King
She took another deep breath, then sucked in one more. Barbie pushed down on top of the tire to help her along. Faintly, in some other world, he could hear Sam coughing and coughing and coughing.
He'll rip himself apart, Barbie thought. He felt as if he might come apart himself if he didn't breathe soon, and when Julia pushed the tire at him a second time, he bent over the makeshift straw and sucked in deeply, trying to draw the dusty, wonderful air all the way to the bottom of his lungs. There wasn't enough, it seemed there could never be enough, and there was a moment when panic
(God I'm drowning )
almost engulfed him. The urge to bolt back to the van--never mind Julia, let Julia take care of herself--was nearly too strong to resist ... but he did resist it. He closed his eyes, breathed, and tried to find the cool, calm center that had to be there someplace.
Easy. Slow. Easy.
He dragged in a third long, steady inhale from the tire, and his pounding heart began to slow a little. He watched Julia lean forward and grip the box on either side. Nothing happened, and this didn't surprise Barbie. She had touched the box when they first came up here, and was now immune to the shock.
Then, suddenly, her back arched. She moaned. Barbie tried to offer her the spindle-straw, but she ignored it. Blood burst from her nose and began to trickle from the corner of her right eye. Red drops slid down her cheek.
"What's happenin?" Sam called. His voice was muffled, choked.
I don't know, Barbie thought. I don't know what's happening.
But he knew one thing: if she didn't take more air soon, she'd die. He pulled the spindle out of the tire, clamped it between his teeth, and plunged Sam's knife into the second tire. He drove the spindle into the hole and plugged it with the swatch of plastic.
Then he waited.
10
This is the time that is no time:
She's in a vast white roofless room with an alien green sky above. It's ... what? The playroom? Yes, the playroom. Their playroom.
(No, she's lying on the floor of the bandstand. )
She's a woman of a certain age.
(No, she's a little girl. )
There is no time.
(It's 1974 and there's all the time in the world. )
She needs to breathe from the tire.
(She doesn't. )
Something is looking at her. Something terrible. But she is terrible to it, as well, because she's bigger than she's supposed to be, and she's here. She's not supposed to be here. She's supposed to be in the box. Yet she is still harmless. It knows that, even though it is
(just a kid )
very young; barely out of the nursery, in fact. It speaks.
--You are make-believe.
--No, I'm real. Please, I'm real. We all are.
The leatherhead regards her with its eyeless face. It frowns. The corners of its mouth turn down, although it has no mouth. And Julia realizes how lucky she is to have found one of them alone. There are usually more, but they have
(gone home to dinner gone home to lunch gone to bed gone to school gone on vacation, doesn't matter they're gone )
gone somewhere. If they were here together, they would drive her back. This one could drive her back alone, but she is curious.
She?
Yes.
This one is female, like her.
--Please let us go. Please let us live our little lives.
No answer. No answer. No answer. Then:
--You aren't real. You are--
What? What does she say? You are toys from the toyshop? No, but it's something like that. Julia has a flicker-memory of the ant farm her brother had when they were kids. The recollection comes and goes in less than a second. Ant farm isn't right, either, but like toys from the toyshop, it's close. It's in the ballpark, as they say.
--How can you have lives if you aren't real?
--WE ARE SO REAL! she cries, and this is the moan Barbie hears.--AS REAL AS YOU!
Silence. A thing with a shifting leather face in a vast white roofless room that is also somehow the Chester's Mill bandstand. Then:
--Prove it.
--Give me your hand.
--I have no hand. I have no body. Bodies aren't real. Bodies are dreams.
--Then give me your mind!
The leatherhead child does not. Will not.
So Julia takes it.
11
This is the place that is no place:
It's cold on the bandstand, and she's so scared. Worse, she's ... humiliated? No, it's much worse than humiliation. If she knew the word abased, she would say Yes, yes, that's it, I'm abased. They took her slacks.
(And somewhere soldiers are kicking naked people in a gym. This is someone else's shame all mixed up with hers. )
She's crying.
(He feels like crying, but doesn't. Right now they have to cover this up. )
The girls have left her now, but her nose is still bleeding--Lila slapped her and promised to cut her nose off if she told and they all spit on her and now she is lying here and she must have cried really hard because she thinks her eye is bleeding as well as her nose and she can't seem to catch her breath. But she doesn't care how much she bleeds or from where. She'd rather bleed to death on the bandstand floor than walk home in her stupid baby underpants. She'd gladly bleed to death from a hundred places if it meant she didn't have to see the soldier
(After this Barbie tries not to think of that soldier but when he does he thinks "Hackermeyer the hackermonster." ) pull the naked man up by the thing
(hajib )
he's wearing on his head, because she knows what comes next. It's what always comes next when you're under the Dome.
She sees that one of the girls has come back. Kayla Bevins has come back. She's standing there and looking down at stupid Julia Shumway who thought she was smart. Stupid little Julia Shumway in her baby pannies. Has Kayla come back to take the rest of her clothes and throw them up onto the bandstand roof, so she has to walk home naked with her hands over her woofie? Why are people so mean?
She closes her eyes against tears and when she opens them again, Kayla has changed. Now she has no face, just a kind of shifting leather helmet that shows no compassion, no love, not even hate.
Only ... interest. Yes, that. What does it do when I do ... this ?
Julia Shumway is worthy of no more. Julia Shumway doesn't matter; find the least of the least, then look below that, and there she is, a scurrying Shumway-bug. She is a naked prisoner-bug, too; a prisoner-bug in a gymnasium with nothing left but the unraveling hat on his head and beneath the hat a final memory of fragrant, freshly baked khubz held out in his wife's hands. She is a cat with a burning tail, an ant under a microscope, a fly about to lose its wings to the curious plucking fingers of a third-grader on a rainy day, a game for bored children with no bodies and the whole universe at their feet. She is Barbie, she is Sam dying in Linda Everett's van, she is Ollie dying in the cinders, she is Alva Drake mourning her dead son.
But mostly she is a little girl cowering on the splintery boards of the Town Common bandstand, a little girl who was punished for her innocent arrogance, a little girl who made the mistake of thinking she was big when she was small, that she mattered when she didn't, that the world cared when in reality the world is a huge dead locomotive with an engine but no headlight. And with all her heart and mind and soul she cries out:
--PLEASE LET US LIVE! I BEG YOU, PLEASE!
And for just one moment she is the leatherhead in the white room; she is the girl who has (for reasons she cannot even explain to herself) come back to the bandstand. For one terrible moment Julia is the one who did it instead of the one who was done by. She is even the soldier with the gun, the hackermonster Dale Barbara still dreams about, the one he didn't stop.
Then she is only herself again.
Looking up at Kayla Bevins.
Kayla's family is poor. Her father cuts pulp on the TR and drinks down at Freshie's Pub (which will, in the fullness
of time, become Dipper's). Her mother has a big old pink mark on her cheek, so the kids call her Cherry Face or Strawberry Head. Kayla doesn't have any nice clothes. Today she is wearing an old brown sweater and an old plaid skirt and scuffed loafers and white socks with saggy tops. One knee is scraped where she fell or was pushed down on the playground. It's Kayla Bevins, all right, but now her face is made of leather. And although it shifts through many shapes, none of them is even close to human.
Julia thinks: I'm seeing how the child looks to the ant, if the ant looks up from its side of the magnifying glass. If it looks up just before it starts to burn.
--PLEASE, KAYLA! PLEASE! WE ARE ALIVE!
Kayla looks down at her without doing anything. Then she crosses her arms in front of her--they are human arms in this vision--and pulls her sweater over her head. There is no love in her voice when she speaks; no regret or remorse.
But there might be pity.
She says
12
Julia was hurled away from the box as if a hand had swatted her. The held breath blew out of her. Before she could take another one, Barbie seized her by the shoulder, pulled the swatch of plastic from the spindle, and pushed her mouth onto it, hoping he wouldn't cut her tongue, or--God forbid--skewer the hard plastic into the roof of her mouth. But he couldn't let her breathe the poisoned air. As oxygen-starved as she was, it might send her into convulsions or kill her outright.
Wherever she'd been, Julia seemed to understand. Instead of trying to struggle away, she wrapped her arms around the Prius tire in a deathgrip and began sucking frantically at the spindle. He could feel huge, shuddering tremors racing through her body.
Sam had finally stopped coughing, but now there was another sound. Julia heard it, too. She sucked in another vast breath from the tire and looked up, eyes wide in their deep, shadowed sockets.
A dog was barking. It had to be Horace, because he was the only dog left. He--
Barbie grabbed her arm in a grip so strong she felt he would break it. On his face was an expression of pure amazement.
The box with the strange symbol on it was hovering four feet above the ground.
13
Horace was first to feel the fresh air, because he was lowest to the ground. He began to bark. Then Joe felt it: a breeze, startlingly cold, against his sweaty back. He was leaning against the Dome, and the Dome was moving. Moving up. Norrie had been dozing with her flushed face resting on Joe's chest, and now he saw a lock of her dirty, matted hair begin to flutter. She opened her eyes.
"What--? Joey, what's happening?"
Joe knew, but was too stunned to tell her. He could feel a cool sliding sensation against his back, like an endless sheet of glass being raised.
Horace was barking madly now, his back bowed, his snout on the ground. It was his I-want-to-play position, but Horace wasn't playing. He stuck his nose beneath the rising Dome and sniffed cold sweet fresh air.
Heaven!
14
On the south side of the Dome, Pfc Clint Ames was also dozing. He sat cross-legged on the soft shoulder of Route 119 with a blanket wrapped around him Indian-style. The air suddenly darkened, as if the bad dreams flitting through his head had assumed physical form. Then he coughed himself awake.
Soot was swirling up around his booted feet and settling on the legs of his khaki everydays. Where in God's name was it coming from? All the burning had been inside. Then he saw. The Dome was going up like a giant windowblind. It was impossible--it went miles down as well as up, everybody knew that--but it was happening.
Ames didn't hesitate. He crawled forward on his hands and knees and seized Ollie Dinsmore by the arms. For a moment he felt the rising Dome scrape the middle of his back, glassy and hard, and there was time to think If it comes back down now, it'll cut me in two. Then he was dragging the boy out.
For a moment he thought he was hauling a corpse. "No!" he shouted. He carried the boy up toward one of the roaring fans. "Don't you dare die on me, cow-kid!"
Ollie began coughing, then leaned over and vomited weakly. Ames held him while he did it. The others were running toward them now, shouting jubilantly, Sergeant Groh in the forefront.
Ollie puked again. "Don't call me cow-kid," he whispered.
"Get an ambulance!" Ames shouted. "We need an ambulance!"
"Nah, we'll take him to Central Maine General in the helicopter," Groh said. "You ever been in a helicopter, kid?"
Ollie, his eyes dazed, shook his head. Then he puked on Sergeant Groh's shoes.
Groh beamed and shook Ollie's filthy hand. "Welcome back to the United States, son. Welcome back to the world."
Ollie put an arm around Ames's neck. He was aware that he was passing out. He tried to hold on long enough to say thank you, but he didn't make it. The last thing he was aware of before the darkness took him again was the southern soldier kissing him on the cheek.
15
On the north end, Horace was the first one out. He raced directly to Colonel Cox and began to dance around his feet. Horace had no tail, but it didn't matter; his entire hind end was wig-wagging.
"I'll be damned," Cox said. He picked the Corgi up and Horace began to lick his face frantically.
The survivors stood together on their side (the line of demarcation was clear in the grass, bright on one side and listless gray on the other), beginning to understand but not quite daring to believe. Rusty, Linda, the Little Js, Joe McClatchey and Norrie Calvert, with their mothers standing to either side of them. Ginny, Gina Buffalino, and Harriet Bigelow with their arms around each other. Twitch was holding his sister Rose, who was sobbing and cradling Little Walter. Piper, Jackie, and Lissa were holding hands. Pete Freeman and Tony Guay, all that remained of the Democrat 's staff, stood behind them. Alva Drake leaned against Rommie Burpee, who was holding Alice Appleton in his arms.
They watched as the Dome's dirty surface rose swiftly into the air. The fall foliage on the other side was heartbreaking in its brilliance.
Sweet fresh air lifted their hair and dried the sweat on their skin.
"For we saw as if through a glass darkly," Piper Libby said. She was weeping. "But now we see as if face to face."
Horace jumped from Colonel Cox's arms and began turning figure eights through the grass, yapping, sniffing, and trying to pee on everything at once.
The survivors looked unbelievingly up at the bright sky arching over a late fall Sunday morning in New England. And above them, the dirty barrier that had held them prisoner still rose, moving faster and faster, shrinking to a line like a long dash of pencil on a sheet of blue paper.
A bird swooped through the place where the Dome had been. Alice Appleton, still being carried by Rommie, looked up at it and laughed.
16
Barbie and Julia knelt with the tire between them, taking alternate breaths from the spindle-straw. They watched as the box began to rise again. It went slowly at first, and seemed to hover a second time at a height of about sixty feet, as if doubtful. Then it shot straight up at a speed far too fast for the human eye to follow; it would have been like trying to see a bullet in flight. The Dome was either flying upward or somehow being reeled in.
The box, Barbie thought. It's drawing the Dome up the way a magnet draws iron filings.
A breeze came beating toward them. Barbie marked its progress in the rippling grass. He shook Julia by the shoulder and pointed dead north. The filthy gray sky was blue again, and almost too bright to look at. The trees had come into bright focus.
Julia raised her head from the spindle and breathed.
"I don't know if that's such a good--" Barbie began, but then the breeze arrived. He saw it lift Julia's hair and felt it drying the sweat on his grime-streaked face, as gentle as a lover's palm.
Julia was coughing again. He pounded her back, taking his own first breath of the air as he did so. It still stank and clawed at his throat, but it was breathable. The bad air was blowing south as fresh air from the TR-90 side of the Dome--what had been th
e TR-90 side of the Dome--poured in. The second breath was better; the third better still; the fourth a gift from God.
Or from one leatherhead girl.
Barbie and Julia embraced next to the black square of ground where the box had been. Nothing would grow there, not ever again.
17
"Sam!" Julia cried. "We have to get Sam!"
They were still coughing as they ran to the Odyssey, but Sam wasn't. He was slumped over the wheel, eyes open, breathing shallowly. His lower face was bearded with blood, and when Barbie pulled him back, he saw that the old man's blue shirt had turned a muddy purple.
"Can you carry him?" Julia asked. "Can you carry him to where the soldiers are?"
The answer was almost certainly no, but Barbie said, "I can try."
"Don't," Sam whispered. His eyes shifted toward them. "Hurts too much." Fresh blood seeped from his mouth with each word. "Did you do it?"
"Julia did," Barbie said. "I don't know exactly how, but she did."
"Part of it was the man in the gym," she said. "The one the hackermonster shot."
Barbie's mouth dropped open, but she didn't notice. She put her arms around Sam and kissed him on each cheek. "And you did it, too, Sam. You drove us out here, and you saw the little girl on the bandstand."
"You 'us no little girl in my dream," Sam said. "You 'us grown up."
"The little girl was still there, though." Julia touched her chest. "Still here, too. She lives."
"Help me out of the van," Sam whispered. "I want to smell some fresh air before I die."
"You're not going to--"
"Hush, woman. We both know better'n that."
They both took an arm, gently lifted him from behind the wheel, and laid him on the ground.
"Smell that air," he said. "Good Lord." He breathed in deeply, then coughed out a spray of blood. "I'm gettin a whiff of honeysuckle."
"Me too," she said, and brushed his hair back from his brow.
He put his hand over hers. "Were they ... were they sorry?"
"There was only one," Julia said. "If there had been more, it never would have worked. I don't think you can fight a crowd that's bent on cruelty. And no--she wasn't sorry. She took pity, but she wasn't sorry."
