Under the Dome

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), begi

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 the 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 leathernead girl.

Barbie and Julia embraced next to the black square of ground where the box had been. Nothing would grow there, not ever again.

'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.'

Tjhey 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'

'Not the same things, are they?' the old man whispered.

' Not at all.'

'Pity's for strong people,' he said, and sighed.'I can only be sorry. What I done was because of the booze, but I'm still sorry. I'd take it back if ever I could.'

'Whatever it was, you made up for it in the end,' Barbie said. He took Sam's left hand. The wedding ring hung on the third finger, grotesquely large for the scant flesh.