Only a single oxygen tank remained in the red wagon by the time Sloppy Sam arrived at the refugee camp by the Dome, and the needle on the dial was resting just above zero. He made no objection when Rusty took the mask and clapped it over Ernie Calvert's face, only crawled to the Dome next to where Barbie and Julia were sitting. There the new arrival got down on all fours and breathed deeply. Horace the Corgi, sitting at Julia's side, looked at him with interest.
Sam rolled over on his back. 'It ain't much, but better'n what I had. The last little bit in them tanks never tastes good like it does fresh off the top.'
Then, incredibly, he lit a cigarette.
'Put that out, are you insane?'Julia said.
'Been dyin for one,' Sam said, inhaling with satisfaction. 'Can't smoke around oxygen, you know. Blow y'self up, likely as not. Although there's people who does it.'
'Might as well let him go,' Rommie said. 'It can't be any worse than the crap we're breathing. For all we know, the tar and nicotine in his lungs is protectin him,'
Rusty came over and sat down. 'That tank's a dead soldier,' he said, 'but Ernie got a few extra breaths from it. He seems to be resting easier now. Thanks, Sam.'
Sam waved it away. 'My air's your air, doc. Or at least it was. Say, can't you make more with somethin in your ambulance there? The guys who bring my tanks - who did, anyway, before this sack of shit hit the fan - they could make more right in their truck. They had a whatdoyoucallit, pump of some kind.'
'Oxygen extractor,' Rusty said, 'and you're right, we have one on board. Unfortunately, it's broken.' He showed his teeth in what passed for a grin. 'It's been broken for the last three months.'
'Four,' Twitch said, coming over. He was looking at Sam's cigarette. 'Don't suppose you got any more of those, do you?'
'Don't even think about it,' Ginny said.
'Afraid of polluting this tropical paradise with secondary smoke, darlin?' Twitch asked, but when Sloppy Sam held out his battered pack of American Eagles, Twitch shook his head.
Rusty said, 'I put in the request for a replacement 02 extractor myself. To the hospital board. They say the budget's maxed out, but maybe I can get some help from the town. So I send the request to the Board of Selectmen.'
'Rennie,' Piper Libby said.
'Rennie,' Rusty agreed. 'I get a form letter back saying my request will be taken up at the budget meeting in November. So I guess we'll see then.' He flapped his hands at the sky and laughed.
Others were gathering around now, looking at Sam with curiosity. And at his cigarette with horror.
'How'd you get here, Sam?' Barbie asked.
Sam was more than happy to tell his tale. He began with how, as a result of the emphysema diagnosis, he'd "wound up getting regular oxygen deliveries thanks to THE MEDICAL, and how sometimes the full tanks backed up on him. He told about hearing the explosion, and what he'd seen when he went outside.
T knew what was gonna happen as soon as I saw how big it was,' he said. His audience now included the military on the other side. Cox, dressed in boxer shorts and a khaki undershirt, was among them; 'I seen bad fires before, back when I was workin in the woods. Couple of times we had to drop everything and just outrun em, and if one of those old International Harvester trucks we had in those days hadda bogged down, we never woulda. Crown fires is the worst, because they make their own wind. I seen right away the same was gonna happen with this one. Somethin almighty big exploded. What was it?'
'Propane,' Rose said.
Sam stroked his white-stubbled chin. 'Ayuh, but propane wasn't all. There was chemicals, too, because some of those flames was green.
'If it had come my way, I woulda been done. You folks too. But it sucked south instead. Shape of the land had somethin to do with that, I shouldn't wonder. And the riverbed, too. Anyways, I knew what was gonna happen, and I got the tanks out of the oxygen bar - '
'The what?' Barbie asked.
Sam took a final drag on his cigarette, then butted it in the dirt. 'Oh, that's just the name I give to the shed where I kep' them tanks. Anyway, I had five full ones - '
'Five!' Thurston Marshall almost moaned.
'Ayuh,' Sam said cheerfully, 'but I never could have drug five. I'm gettin on in years, you know.'
'Couldn't you have found a car or a truck?' Lissa Jamieson asked.
'Ma'am, I lost my drivin license seven years ago. Or maybe it was eight. Too many DUIs. If I got caught behind the wheel of anything bigger'n a go-kart again, they'd put me in County and throw away the key.'
Barbie considered pointing out the fundamental flaw in this, but why bother wasting breath when breath was now so hard to come by?
'Anyway, four tanks in that little red wagon of mine I thought I could manage, and I hadn't gone but a quarter of a mile before I started pullin on the first one. Had to, don'tcha see.'
Jackie Wettington asked, 'Did you know we were out here?'
'No, ma'am. It was high ground, that's all, and I knew my canned air wouldn't last forever. I didn't guess about you, and I didn't guess about those fans, either. It was just a case of nowhere else to go.'