Many of those who have chosen to stay away from the Dome (a disquieting number have remained in town because they're beginning to experience respiratory problems) are able to watch on television. Thirty or forty have gravitated to Dipper's. Tommy and Willow Anderson are at the Dome, but they've left the roadhouse open and the big-screen TV on. The people who gather on the honky-tonk hardwood floor to watch do so quietly, although there is some weeping. The HDTV images are crystal clear. They are heartbreaking.
Nor are they the only ones who are affected by the sight of eight hundred people lining up along the invisible barrier, some with their hands planted on what appears to be thin air. Wolf Blitzer says, 'I have never seen such longing on human faces. I...' He chokes up. 'I think I better let the images speak for themselves.'
He falls silent, and that's a good thing. This scene needs no narration.
At his press conference, Cox said, Visitors will debark and walk... visitors will be allowed within two yards of the Dome, we consider that a safe distance. Nothing like that happens, of course. As soon as the doors of the buses open, people spill out in a flood, calling the names of their nearest and dearest. Some fall and are briskly trampled (one will be killed in this stampede and fourteen will be injured, half a dozen seriously). Soldiers who attempt to enforce the dead zone directly in front of the Dome are swept aside. The yellow DO NOT CROSS tapes are knocked down and disappear in the dust raised by running feet. The newcomers swarm forward and spread out on their side of the Dome, most crying and all of them calling for their wives, their husbands, their grandparents, their sons, their daughters, their fiancees. Four people have either lied about their various electronic medical devices or forgotten about them. Three of these die immediately; the fourth, who didn't see his battery-powered hearing-aid implant on the list of forbidden devices, will linger in a coma for a week before expiring of multiple brain hemorrhages.
Little by little they sort themselves out, and the pool TV cameras see it all. They observe the townspeople and the visitors pressing their hands together, with the invisible barrier between; they watch them try to kiss; they examine men and women weeping as they look into each other's eyes; they note the ones who faint, both inside the Dome and out, and those who fall to their knees and pray facing each other with their folded hands raised; they record the man on the outside who begins hammering his fists against the thing keeping him from his pregnant wife, hammering until his skin splits and his blood beads on thin air; they peer at the old woman trying to trace her fingers, the tips pressed white and smooth against the unseen surface between them, over her sobbing granddaughter's forehead.
The press helicopter takes off again and hovers, sending back images of a double human snake spread over a quarter of a mile. On the Motton side, the leaves flame and dance with late October color; on the Chester's Mill side they hang limp Behind the townsfolk - on the road, in the fields, caught in the bushes - are dozens of discarded signs. At this moment of reunion (or almost-reunion), politics and protest have been forgotten.
Candy Crowley says: 'Wolf, this is without a doubt the saddest, strangest event I've witnessed in all my years of reporting.'
Yet human beings are nothing if not adaptable, and little by little the excitement and the strangeness begin to wear off. The reunions merge into the actual visiting. And behind the visitors, those who have been overwhelmed - on both sides of the Dome - are being carried away. On The Mill side, there's no Red Cross tent to drag them to. The police put them in such scant shade as the police cars allow, to wait for Pamela Chen and the schoolbus.
In the police station, the WCIK raiding party is watching with the same silent fascination as everyone else. Randolph lets them; there is a little time yet. He checks the names off on his clipboard, then motions Freddy Denton to join him on the front steps. He has expected grief from Freddy for taking over the head honcho role (Peter Randolph has been judging others by himself his whole life), but there is none.This is a far bigger deal than rousting scuzzy old drunks out of convenience stores, and Freddy is delighted to hand off the responsibility. He wouldn't mind taking credit if things went well, but suppose they don't? P^andolph has no such qualms. One unemployed troublemaker and a mild-mannered druggist who wouldn't say shit if it was in his cereal? What can possibly go wrong?
And Freddy discovers, as they stand on the steps Piper Libby tumbled down not so long ago, that he isn't going to be able to duck the leadership role completely. Randolph hands him a slip of paper. On it are seven names. One is Freddy's.The other six are Mel Searles, George Frederick, Marty Arsenault, Aubrey Towle, Stubby Norman, and Lauren Conree.
'You will take this party down the access road,' Randolph says. 'You know the one?'
'Yep, busts off from Little Bitch this side of town. Sloppy Sam's father laid that little piece of roa - '
'I don't care who laid it,' Randolph says, 'just drive to the end of it. At noon, you take your men through the belt of woods there. You'll come out in back of the radio station. Noon, Freddy. That doesn't mean a minute before or a minute after.'
'I thought we were all supposed to go in that way, Pete.'
'Plans have changed.'