'Right. I'm totally here,' Norrie said.
'For the rest of you, short-term exposure should be okay. But I mean very short term. If I should go down halfway up the ridge or actually in the orchard, leave me.'
'Dat s harsh, Doc'
'I don't mean for good,' Rusty said. 'You've got more lead roll back at the store, don't you?'
'Yeah. We should have brought it.'
'I agree, but you can't think of everything. If worst comes to worst, get the rest of the lead roll, stick pieces in the windows of whatever you're driving, and scoop me up. Hell, by then I might be on my feet again and walking toward town.'
'Yeah. Or still layin knocked out an' gettin a lethal dose.'
'Look, Rommie, we're probably worrying about nothing. I think the wooziness - the actual passing-out, if you're a kid - is like the other Dome-related phenomena. You feel it once, then you're okay'
'You could be bettin your life on dat.'
'We've got to start placing bets at some point.'
'Good luck,'Joe said, and extended his fist through the window.
Rusty pounded it lightly, then did the same with Norrie and Benny. Rommie also extended his fist. 'What's good for the kids is good enough for me.'
13
Twenty yards beyond the place where Rusty had had the vision of the dummy in the stovepipe hat, the clicks from the Geiger counter mounted to a staticky roar. He saw the needle standing at +400, just into the red.
He pulled over and hauled out gear he would have preferred not to put on. He looked back at the others. 'A word of warning,' he said. 'And I'm talking to you in particular, Mr Benny Drake. If you laugh, you're walking home.'
'I won't laugh,' Benny said, but in short order they were all laughing, including Rusty himself. He took off his jeans, then pulled a pair of football practice pants up over his undershorts. Where pads on the thighs and bu**ocks should have gone, he stuffed precut pieces of lead roll. Then he donned a pair of catcher's shinguards and curved more lead roll over them. This was followed by a lead collar to shield his thyroid gland, and a lead apron to shield his testes. It was the biggest one they had, and hung all the way down to the bright orange shinguards. He had considered hanging another apron over his back (looking ridiculous was better than dying of lung cancer, in his view), and had decided against it. He had already pushed his weight to over three hundred pounds. And radiation didn't curve. If he faced the source, he thought he'd be okay.
Well. Maybe.
To this point, Romrnie and the kids had managed to restrict themselves to discreet chuckles and a few strangulated giggles. Control wavered when Rusty stuffed a size XL bathing cap with two pieces of lead roll and pulled it down over his head, but it wasn't until he yanked on the elbow-length gloves and added the goggles that they lost it entirely.
'It lives!' Benny cried, striding around with his arms outstretched like Frankenstein's monster. 'Master, it lives!'
Rommie staggered to the side of the road and sat on a rock, bellowing with laughter. Joe and Norrie collapsed on the road itself, rolling around like chickens taking a dustbath.
'Walking home, every one of you,' Rusty said, but he was smiling as he climbed (not without difficulty') back into the van.
Ahead of him, the purple light flashed out like a beacon.
14
Henry Morrison left the PD when the raucous, locker-room-at-halftime banter of the new recruits finally became too much to bear. It was going wrong, all of it. He supposed he'd known that even before Thibodeau, the thug who was now guarding Selectman Rennie, showed up with a signed order to can Jackie Wettington - a fine officer and an even finer woman.
Henry regarded this as the first move in what would probably be a comprehensive effort to remove the older officers, the ones Rennie would see as Duke Perkins partisans, from the force. He himself would be next. Freddy Denton and Rupert Libby would probably stay; Rupe was a moderate ass**le, Denton severe. Linda Everett would go. Probably Stacey Moggin, too. Then, except for that dimbulb Lauren Conree, the Chester's Mill PD would be an all-boys' club again.
He cruised slowly down Main Street, which was almost entirely empty - like a ghost-town street in a Western. Sloppy SamVerdreaux was sitting under the marquee of the Globe, and that bottle between his knees probably did not contain Pepsi-Cola, but Henry didn't stop. Let the old sot have his tipple.
Johnny and Carrie Carver were boarding up the front windows of the Gas & Grocery. They were both wearing the blue armbands that had started to pop up all over town. They gave Henry the creeps.