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 missile 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.
They see what it is, of course; the sharper-eyed among them can even read the name on the body of the plummeting plane before it disappears below the treeline. It is nothing supernatural; it has even happened before, and just this week (although on a smaller scale, admittedly). But in the people of Chester's Mill, it inspires a kind of sullen dread that will hold sway over the town from then until the end.
Anyone who has ever cared for a terminal patient will tell you that there comes a tipping point when denial dies and acceptance finds its way in. For most people in Chester's Mill, the tipping point came at midmorning on October twenty-fifth, while they stood either alone or with their neighbors, watching as more than three hundred people plunged into the woods of TR-90.
Earlier that morning, perhaps fifteen percent of the town was wearing blue 'solidarity' armbands; by sundown on this Wednesday in October, it will be twice that. When the sun conies up tomorrow, it will be over fifty percent of the population.
Denial gives way to acceptance; acceptance breeds dependence. Anyone who's ever cared for a terminal patient will tell you that, too. Sick people need someone who will bring them their pills and glasses of cold sweet juice to wash them down with. They need someone to soothe their aching joins with arnica gel. They need someone to sit with them when the night is dark and the hours stretch out. They need someone to say, Sleep now, it will be better in the morning. I'm here, so sleep. Sleep now. Sleep and let me take care of everything.
Sleep.
19
Officer Henry Morrison got Junior to the hospital - by then the kid had regained a soupy semblance of consciousness, although he was still talking gibberish - and Twitch wheeled him away on a gurney. It was a relief to see him go.
Henry got Big Jim's home and Town Hall office numbers from directory assistance, but there was no answer at either - they were landlines. He was listening to a robot tell him that James Rennie's cell-phone number was unlisted when the jetliner exploded. He
rushed out with everyone else who was ambulatory and stood in the turnaround, looking at the new black mark on the Dome's invisible surface. The last of the debris was still fluttering down.
Big Jim was indeed in his Town Hall office, but he had killed the phone so he could work on both speeches - the one to the cops tonight, the one to the entire town tomorrow night - without interruption. He heard the explosion and rushed outside. His first thought was that Cox had set off a nuke. A cotton-picking nuke! If it broke through the Dome, it would ruin everything!
He found himself standing next to Al Timmons, the Town Hall janitor. Al pointed north, high in the sky, where smoke was still rising. It looked to Big Jim like an anti-aircraft burst in an old World War II movie.
'It was an airplane!' Al shouted. 'And a big one! Christ! Didn't they get the word?'
Big Jim felt a cautious sense of relief, and his triphammering heart slowed a bit. If it was a plane... just a plane and not a nuke or some kind of super-missile...