On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field.
Авторы: King Stephen Edwin
to Carta’s shrieks as her back is broken and baby Steven is crushed to death beneath her. All Velma knows is that she has-to get out of here. Somehow, she has to get out.
At the Dome, the reunions have been ended by an apocalyptic party-crasher. Those on the inside have something more important than relatives to occupy them now: the giant mushroom cloud that’s growing to the northwest of their position, rising on a muscle of fire already almost a mile high. The first feather of wind—the wind that has sent Carter and Big Jim fleeing for the fallout shelter—strikes them, and they cringe against the Dome, mostly ignoring the people behind them. In any case, the people behind them are retreating. They’re lucky; they can.
Henrietta Clavard feels a cold hand wrap around hers. She turns and sees Petra Searles. Petra’s hair has come loose from the clips that were holding it and hangs against her cheeks.
‘Got any more of that joy-juice?’ Petra asks, and manages a ghastly lets-party smile.
‘Sorry, all out,’ Henrietta says.
‘Well—maybe it doesn’t matter.’
‘Hang onto me, honey,’ Henrietta says. ‘Just hang onto me. We’re going to be okay’
But when Petra looks into the old woman’s eyes., she sees no belief and no hope. The party’s almost over.
Look, now. Look and see. Eight hundred people are crammed against the Dome, their heads tilted up and their eyes wide, watching as their inevitable end rushes toward them.
Here are Johnny and Carrie Carver, and Bruce Yardley, who worked at Food City. Here is Tabby Morrell, who owns a lumberyard soon to be reduced to swirling ash, and his wife, Bonnie; Toby Manning, who clerked at the department store;Trina Cole and Donnie Baribeau; Wendy Goldstone with her friend and fellow teacher Ellen Vanedestine; Bill Allnut, who wouldn’t go get the bus, and his wife, Sarah, who is screaming for Jesus to save her as she watches the oncoming fire. Here are Todd Wendlestat and Manuel Ortega with their faces raised dumbly to the west, where the world is disappearing in smoke.Tommy and Willow Anderson, who will never book another band from Boston into their roadhouse. See them all, a whole town with its back to an invisible wall.
Behind them, the visitors go from backing up to retreat, and from retreat into full flight. They ignore the buses and pound straight down the highway toward Motton. A few soldiers hold position, but most throw their guns down, tear after the crowd, and look back no more than Lot looked back at Sodom.
Cox doesn’t flee. Cox approaches the Dome and shouts: ‘You! Officer in charge!’
Henry Morrison turns, walks to the Colonel’s position, and braces his hands on a hard and mystic surface he can’t see. Breathing has become difficult; bad wind pushed by the firestorm hits the Dome, swirls, then backdrafts toward the hungry thing that’s coming: a black wolf with red eyes. Here, on the Motton town line, is the lambfold where it will feed.
‘Help us,’ Henry says.
Cox looks at the firestorm and estimates it will reach the crowd’s current position in no more than fifteen minutes, perhaps as few as three. It’s not a fire or an explosion; in this closed and already polluted environment, it is a cataclysm.
‘Sir, I cannot,’ he says.
Before Henry can reply, Joe Boxer grabs his arm. He is gibbering.
‘Quit it, Joe,’ Henry says.’There’s nowhere to run and nothing to do but pray.’
But Joe Boxer does not pray. He is still holding his stupid little hockshop pistol, and after a final crazed look at the oncoming inferno, he puts the gun to his temple like a man playing Russian roulette. Henry makes a grab for it, but is too late. Boxer pulls the trigger. Nor does he die at once, although a gout of blood flies from the side of his head. He staggers away, waving the stupid little pistol like a handkerchief, screaming. Then he falls to his knees, throws his hands up once to the darkening sky like a man in the grip of a godhead revelation, and collapses face-first on the broken white line of the highway.
Henry turns his stunned face back to Colonel Cox, who is simultaneously three feet and a million miles away. ‘I’m so sorry, my friend,’ Cox says.
Pamela Chen stumbles up. ‘The bus!’ she screams to Henry over the building roar.’ We have to take the bus and drive straight through it! It’s our only chance!’
Henry knows this is no chance at all, but he nods, gives Cox a final look (Cox will never forget the cop’s hellish, despairing eyes), takes Pammie Chen’s hand, and follows her to Bus 19 as the smoky blackness races toward them.
The fire reaches downtown and explodes along Main Street like a blowtorch in a pipe. The Peace Bridge is vaporized. Big Jim and Carter cringe in the fallout
