'Then you have nothing to worry about.' Big Jim surveys them one by one, ending with Carter Thibodeau. 'And the way to salvation tonight, young men, is all of you telling the same story.'
Not everyone sees the pink stars. Like the Appleton kids, Rusty Everett's Little Js are fast asleep. So is Piper. So is Andrea Grinnell. So is The Chef, sprawled on the dead grass beside what might be America's biggest methamphetamine lab. Ditto Brenda Perkins, who cried herself to sleep on her couch with the VADER printout scattered on the coffee table before her.
The dead also do not see, unless they look from a brighter place than this darkling plain where ignorant armies clash by night. Myra Evans, Duke Perkins, Chuck Thompson, and Claudette Sanders are tucked away in the Bowie Funeral Home; Dr Haskell, Mr Carty, and Rory Dinsmore are in the morgue of Catherine Russell Hospital; Lester Coggins, Dodee Sanders, and Angie McCain are still hanging out in the McCain pantry. So is Junior. He is between Dodee and Angie, holding their hands. His head aches, but only a little. He thinks he might sleep the night here.
On Motion Road, in Eastchester (not far from the place where the attempt to breach the Dome with an experimental acid compound is even then going on beneath the strange pink sky), Jack Evans, husband of the late Myra, is standing in his backyard with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and his home protection weapon of choice, a Ruger SR9, in the other. He drinks and watches the pink stars fall. He knows what they are, and he wishes on every one, and he wishes for death, because without Myra, the bottom has dropped out of his life. He might be able to live without her, and he might be able to live like a rat in a glass cage, but he cannot manage both. When the falling meteors become more intermittent - this is around quarter after ten, about forty-five minutes after the shower began - he swallows the last of the Jack, casts the bottle onto the grass, and blows his brains out. He is The Mill's first official suicide.
He will not be the last.
18
Barbie, Julia, and Lissa Jamieson watched silently as the two space-suited soldiers removed the thin nozzle from the end of the plastic hose. They put it into an opaque plastic bag with a ziplock top, then put the bag into a metal case stenciled with the words HAZARDOUS MATERIALS. They locked it with separate keys, then took off their helmets. They looked tired, hot, and out of spirits.
Two older men - too old to be soldiers - wheeled a complicated-looking piece of equipment away from the site of the acid experiment, which had been performed three times. Barbie guessed the older guys, possibly scientists from NSA, had been doing some sort of spectrographic analysis. Or trying to. The gas masks they had been wearing during the testing procedure were now pushed up on top of their heads like weird hats. Barbie could have asked Cox what the tests were supposed to show, and Cox might even have given him a straight answer, but Barbie was also out of spirits.
Overhead, the last few pink meteoroids were zipping down the sky.
Lissa pointed back toward Eastchester. 'I heard something that sounded like a gunshot. Did you?'
'Probably a car backfiring or some kid shooting off a bottle rocket,'Julia said. She was also tired and drawn. Once, when it became clear that the experiment - the acid test, so to speak - wasn't going to work, Barbie had caught her wiping her eyes. It hadn't stopped her from taking pictures, with her Kodak, though.
Cox walked toward them, his shadow thrown in two different directions by the lights that had been set up. He gestured to the place where the door-shape had been sprayed on the Dome. 'I'd guess this little adventure cost the American taxpayer about three-quarters of a million dollars, and that's not counting the R&D expenses that went into developing the acid compound. Which ate the paint we sprayed on there and did absolutely f**k-all else.'
'Language, Colonel,' Julia said, with a ghost of her old smile.
'Thank you, Madarn Editor,' Cox said sourly.
'Did you really think this would work?' Barbie asked.
'No, but I didn't think I'd ever live to see a man on Mars, either, but the Russians say they're going to send a crew of four in 2020.'
'Oh, I get it,' Julia said.'The Martians got wind of it, and they're pissed.'
'If so, they retaliated on the wrong country,' Cox said... and Barbie saw something in his eyes.
'How sure are you, Jim?' he asked softly.
'I beg pardon?'
'That the Dome was put in place by extraterrestrials.'
Julia took two steps forward. Her face was pale, her eyes blazing. 'Tell us what you know, goddammit!'
Cox raised his hand. 'Stop. We don't know anything. There is a theory, however. Yes. Marty, come over here.'
One of the older gentlemen who had been running tests approached the Dome. He was holding his gas mask by the strap.
'Your analysis?' Cox asked, and when he saw the older gentleman's hesitation: 'Speak freely.'
'Well...' Marty shrugged. 'Trace minerals. Soil and airborne pollutants. Otherwise, nothing. According to spectrographic analysis, that thing isn't there.'