Under the Dome

He stripped off one of the gloves, touched the ground beside the thing, then snatched his hand back. Hot. Bits of burning apron had scorched some of the grass. Next he reached for the box itself, steeling himself for another burn or another shock… although neither was what he was most afraid of; he was afraid of seeing those leather shapes again, those not-quite-heads bent together in some laughing conspiracy.

But there was nothing. No visions and no heat. The gray box was cool to the touch, even though he’d seen the lead apron on top of it bubbling up and then actually catching fire.

The purple light flashed out. Rusty was careful not to put his hand in front of it. Instead, he gripped the thing’s sides, mentally saying goodbye to his wife and girls, telling them he was sorry for being such a damn fool. He waited to catch fire and burn. When he didn’t, he tried to lift the box. Although it had the surface area of a dinner plate and wasn’t much thicker, he couldn’t budge it. The box might as well have been welded to the top of a pillar planted in ninety feet of New England bedrock—except it wasn’t. It was sitting on top of a grassy mat, and when he wriggled his fingers deeper beneath, they touched. He laced them together and tried again to lift the thing. No shock, no visions, no heat; no movement, either. Not so much as a wiggle.

He thought: My hands are gripping some sort of alien artifact. A machine from another world. I may have even caught a glimpse of its operators.

The idea was intellectually amazing—flabbergasting, even—but it had no emotional gradient, perhaps because he was too stunned, too overwhelmed with information that did not compute.

So what next? Just what the hell next?

He didn’t know. And it seemed he wasn’t emotionally flat after all, because a wave of despair rolled through him, and he was only just able to stop from vocalizing that despair in a cry. The four people down below might hear it and think he was in trouble. Which, of course, he was. Nor was he alone.

He got to his feet on legs that trembled and threatened to give out beneath him. The hot, close air seemed to lie on his skin like oil. He made his way slowly back toward the van through the apple-heavy trees. The only thing he was sure of was that under no circumstances could Big Jim Rennie learn of the generator. Not because he would try to destroy it, but because he’d very likely set a guard around it to make sure it wasn’t destroyed. To make sure it kept right on doing what it was doing, so he could keep on doing what he was doing. For the time being, at least, Big Jim liked things just the way they were.

Rusty opened the door of the van and that was when, less than a mile north of Black Ridge, a huge explosion rocked the day. It was as if God had leaned down and fired a heavenly shotgun.

Rusty shouted in surprise and looked up. He immediately shielded his eyes from the fierce temporary sun burning in the sky over the border between TR-90 and Chester’s Mill. Another plane had crashed into the Dome. Only this time it had been no mere Seneca V. Black smoke billowed up from the point of impact, which Rusty estimated as being at least twenty thousand feet. If the black spot left by the missle strikes was a beauty mark on the cheek of the day, then this new mark was a skin tumor. One that had been allowed to run wild.

Rusty forgot about the generator. He forgot about the four people waiting for him. He forgot about his own children, for whom he had just risked being burned alive and then discorporated. For a space of two minutes, there was no room for anything in his mind but black awe.

Rubble was falling to earth on the other side of the Dome. The smashed forward quarter of the jetliner was followed by a flaming motor; the motor was followed by a waterfall of blue airline seats, many with passengers still strapped into them; the seats were followed by a vast shining wing, seesawing like a sheet of paper in a draft; the wing was followed by the tail of what was probably a 767. The tail was painted dark green. A lighter green shape had been superimposed on it. It looked to Rusty like a clover.

Not a clover, a shamrock.

Then the body of the plane crashed to earth like a defective arrow and lit the woods on fire.

18

The blast rocks the town and they all come out to see. All over Chester’s Mill, they come out to see. They stand in front of their houses, in driveways, on sidewalks, in the middle of Main Street. And although the sky north of their prison is mostly cloudy, they have to shield their eyes from the glare—what looked to Rusty, from his place atop Black Ridge, like a second sun.