Stephen King - Under the Dome

“Let’s get out of here while we still can,” Ernie said.

On the steps, Rusty looked up at the pink stars and breathed air which stank and smelled incredibly sweet at the same time. He turned to Barbie. “I never expected to see the sky again.”

“Neither did I. Let’s blow town while we’ve got the chance. How does Miami Beach sound to you?”

Rusty was still laughing when he got into the van. Several cops were on the Town Hall lawn, and one of them—Todd Wendlestat—looked over. Ernie raised his hand in a wave; Rommie and Jackie followed suit; Wendlestat returned the wave, then bent to help a woman who had gone sprawling to the grass when her high heels betrayed her.

Ernie slid behind the wheel and mated the electrical wires hanging below the dashboard. The engine started, the side door slammed shut, and the van pulled away from the curb. It rolled slowly up Town Common Hill, weaving around a few stunned meeting-goers who were walking in the street. Then they were out of downtown and headed toward Black Ridge, picking up speed.

They started seeing the glow on the other side of a rusty old bridge that now spanned nothing but a mudslick. Barbie leaned forward between the front seats of the van. “What’s that? It looks like the world’s biggest Indiglo watch.”

“It’s radiation,” Ernie said.

“Don’t worry,” Rommie said.

“We’ve got plenty of lead roll.”

“Norrie called me on her mother’s cell phone while I was waiting for you,” Ernie said. “She told me about the glow. She says Julia thinks it’s nothing but a kind of… scarecrow, I guess you’d say. Not dangerous.”

“I thought Julia’s degree was in journalism, not science,” Jackie said. “She’s a very nice lady, and smart, but we’re still going to armor this thing up, right? Because I don’t much fancy getting ovarian or breast cancer as a fortieth birthday present.”

“We’ll drive fast,” Rommie said. “You can even slide a piece of dat lead roll down the front of your jeans, if it’ll make you feel better, you.”

“That’s so funny I forgot to laugh,” she said… then did just that when she got an image of herself in lead panties, fashionably high-cut on the sides.

They came to the dead bear at the foot of the telephone pole. They could have seen it even with the headlights off, because by then the combined light from the pink moon and the radiation belt was almost strong enough to read a newspaper by.

While Rommie and Jackie covered the van’s windows with lead roll, the others stood around the rotting bear in a semicircle.

“Not radiation,” Barbie mused.

“Nope,” Rusty said. “Suicide.”

“And there are others.”

“Yes. But the smaller animals seem to be safe. The kids and I saw plenty of birds, and there was a squirrel in the orchard. It was just as lively as can be.”

“Then Julia’s almost certainly right,” Barbie said.

“The glow-band’s a scarecrow and the dead animals are another. It’s the old belt- and -suspenders thing.”

“I’m not following you, my friend,” Ernie said.

But Rusty, who had learned the belt-and-suspenders approach as a medical student, absolutely was. “Two warnings to keep out,” he said. “Dead animals by day, a glowing belt of radiation by night.”

“So far as I know,” Rommie said, joining them at the side of the road, “radiation only glows in science fiction movies.”

Rusty thought of telling him they were living in a science fiction movie, and Rommie would realize it when he got close to that weird box on the ridge. But of course Rommie was right.

“We’re supposed to see it,” he said. “The same with the dead animals. You’re supposed to say, ‘Whoa—if there’s some kind of suicide ray out here that affects big mammals, I better stay away. After all, I’m a big mammal.’”

“But the kids didn’t back off,” Barbie said.

“Because they’re kids,” Ernie said. And, after a moment’s consideration: “Also skateboarders. They’re a different breed.”

“I still don’t like it,” Jackie said, “but since we have noplace else to go, maybe we could drive through yonder Van Allen Belt before I lose what’s left of my nerve. After what happened at the cop-shop, I’m feeling a little shaky.”

“Wait a minute,” Barbie said. “There’s something out of kilter here. I see it, but give me a second to think how to say it.”

They waited. Moonlight and radiation lit the remains of the bear. Barbie was staring at it. Finally he raised his head.

“Okay, here’s what’s troubling me. There’s a they. We know that because the box Rusty found isn’t a natural phenomenon.”

“Damn straight, it’s a made thing,” Rusty said. “But not terrestrial. I’d bet my life on that.” Then he thought how close he’d come to losing his life not an hour ago and shuddered. Jackie squeezed his shoulder.

“Never mind that part for now,” Barbie said. “There’s a they, and if they really wanted to keep us out, they could. They’re keeping the whole world out of Chester’s Mill. If they wanted to keep us away from their box, why not put a mini-Dome around it?”

“Or a harmonic sound that would cook our brains like chicken legs in a microwave,” Rusty suggested, getting into the spirit of the thing. “Hell, real radiation, for that matter.”

“It might be real radiation,” Ernie said. “In fact, the Geiger counter you brought up here pretty much confirmed that.”

“Yes,” Barbie agreed, “but does that mean that what the Geiger counter’s registering is dangerous? Rusty and the kids aren’t breaking out in lesions, or losing their hair, or vomiting up the linings of their stomachs.”

“At least not yet,” Jackie said.

“ Dat’s cheerful,” Rommie said.

Barbie ignored the byplay. “Surely if they can create a barrier so strong it bounces back the best missiles America can throw at it, they could set up a radiation belt that would kill quickly, maybe instantly. It would even be in their interest to do so. A couple of grisly human deaths would be a lot more apt to discourage explorers than a bunch of dead animals. No, I think Julia’s right, and the so-called radiation belt will turn out to be a harmless glow that’s been spiced up to register on our detection equipment. Which probably seems pretty damn primitive to them, if they really are extraterrestrial.”

“But why?” Rusty burst out. “Why any barrier? I couldn’t lift the damn thing, I couldn’t even rock it! And when I put a lead apron on it, the apron caught fire. Even though the box itself is cool to the touch!”

“If they’re protecting it, there must be some way of destroying it or turning it off,” Jackie said. “Except…”

Barbie was smiling at her. He felt strange, almost as if he were floating above his own head. “Go on, Jackie. Say it.”

“Except they’re not protecting it, are they? Not from people who are determined to approach it.”

“There’s more,” Barbie said. “Couldn’t we say they’re actually pointing at it? Joe McClatchey and his friends were practically following a trail of bread crumbs.”

“Here it is, puny Earthlings,” Rusty said. “What can you do about it, ye who are brave enough to approach?”

“That feels about right,” Barbie said. “Come on. Let’s get up there.”

“You better let me drive from here,” Rusty told Ernie. “Up ahead’s where the kids passed out. Rommie almost did. I felt it too. And I had a kind of hallucination. A Halloween dummy that burst into flames.”