Barbie walked back down Route 119 into the center of town, a distance of about three miles. By the time he got there, it was six o'clock. Main Street was almost deserted, but alive with the roar of generators; dozens of them, by the sound. The traffic light at the intersection of 119 and 117 was dark, but Sweetbriar Rose was lit and loaded. Looking through the big front window, Barbie siw that every table was taken. But when he walked in the door, he heard none of the usual big talk: politics, the Red Sox, the local economy, the Patriots, newly acquired cars and pickemups, the Celtics, the price of gas, the Bruins, newly acquired power tools, the Twin Mills Wildcats. None of the usual laughter, either.
There was a TV over the counter, and everyone was watching it. Barbie observed, with that sense of disbelief and dislocation everyone who actually finds him or herself at the site of a major disaster must feel, that CNN's Anderson Cooper was standing out on Route 119 with the still-smoldering hulk of the wrecked pulp-truck in the background.
Rose herself was waiting table, occasionally darting back to the counter to take an order. Wispy locks of hair were escaping her net and hanging around her face. She looked tired and harried. The counter was supposed to be Angie McCain's territory from four until closing, but Barbie saw no sign of her tonight. Perhaps she'd been out of town when the barrier slammed down. If that were the case, she might not be back behind the counter for a good long while.
Anson Wheeler - whom Rosie usually just called 'tie kid,' although the guy had to be at least twenty-five - was cooking, and Barbie dreaded to think what Anse might do to anything more complicated than beans and franks, the traditional Saturday-night special at Sweetbriar Rose. Woe to the fellow or gal who ordered breaktast-for-dinner and had to face Anson's nuclear fried eggs. Still, it was good he was here, because in addition to the missing Angi;, there was also no sign of Dodee Sanders. Although that particular drip didn't need a disaster to keep her away from work. She wasn't lazy, exactly, but she was easily distracted. And when it came tc brainpower...jeez, what could you say? Her father - Andy Sanders, The "Mill's First Selectman - would never be a Mensa candidate, but Dodee "Xhim look like Albert Einstein.
On the TV, helicopters were landing behind Anderson Cooper, blowing his groovy white hair around and nearly drowning his voice. The copters looked like Pave Lows. Barbie had ridden in his share during his time in Iraq. Now an Army officer walked into the picture, covered Cooper's mike with one gloved hand, and spoke in the reporter's ear.
The assembled diners in Sweetbriar Rose murmured among themselves. Barbie understood their disquiet. He felt it himself. When a man in a uniform covered a famous TV reporter's mike without so much as a by-your-leave, it was surely the End of Days.
The Army guy - a Colonel but not his Colonel, seeing Cox would have completed Barbie's sense of mental dislocation - finished what he had to say. His glove made a windy whroop sound when he took it off the mike. He walked out of the shot, his face a stolid blank. Barbie recognized the look: Army pod-person.
Cooper was saying, 'The press is being told we have to fall back half a mile, to a place called Raymond's Roadside Store.'The patrons murmured again at this. They all knew Raymond's Roadside in Motton, where the sign in the window said COLD BEER HOT SANDWICHES FRESH BAIT. 'This area, less than a hundred yards from what we're calling the barrier - for want of a better term - has been declared a national security site. We'll resume our coverage as soon as we can, but right now I'm sending it back to you in Washington, Wolf.'
The headline on the red band beneath the location shot read BREAKING NEWS MAINE TOWN CUT OFF MYSTERY DEEPENS. And in the upper righthand corner, in red, the word SEVERE was blinking like a neon tavern sign. Drink Severe Beer, Barbie thought, and nearly chuckled.
Wolf Blitzer took Anderson Cooper's place. Rose had a crush on Blitzer and would not allow the TV to be tuned to anything but The Situation Room on weekday afternoons; she called him 'my Wolfie.' This evening Wolfie was wearing a tie, but it was badly knotted and Barbie thought the rest of his clothes looked suspiciously like Saturday grubs.
'Recapping our story,' Rose's Wolfie said,'this afternoon at roughly one o'clock - '
'Twas earlier than that, and by quite a patch,' someone said.
'Is it true about Myra Evans?' someone else asked. 'Is she really dead?'
;Yes,' Fernald Bowie said. The town's only undertaker, Stewp-Bowie, was Fern's older brother. Fern sometimes helped when he was sober, and he looked sober tonight. Shocked sober. 'Now shutcha quack so I can hear this.'
Barbie wanted to hear it, too, because Wolfie was even now addressing the question Barbie cared most about, and sayir g what Barbie wanted to hear: that the airspace over Chester's Mill hid been declared a no-fly zone. In fact, all of western Maine and eastern New Hampshire, from Lewiston-Auburn to North Conway, was a no-fly zone. The President was being briefed. And for the first time in nine years, the color of the National Threat Advisory had exceeded orange.
Julia Shumway, owner and editor of the Democrat, shot Barbie a glance as he passed her table. Then the pinched and secretive little smile that was her specialty - almost her trademark - flickered on her face. 'It seems that Chester's Mill doesn't want to let you go, Mr Barbara.'