by Stephen King
There was a lot of traffic, mostly headed south. A few of these folks might have legitimate errands, but Rusty thought most were human flies being drawn to the smell of blood. Twitch passed a line of four with no problem; the northbound lane of 119 was oddly empty.
“Look!” Twitch said, pointing. “News chopper! We’re gonna be on the six o’clock news, Big Rusty! Heroic paramedics fight to—”
But that was where Dougie Twitchell’s flight of fancy ended. Ahead of them—at the accident site, Rusty presumed—the helicopter did a buttonhook. For a moment he could read the number 13 on its side and see the CBS eye. Then it exploded, raining down fire from the cloudless early afternoon sky.
Twitch cried out: “Jesus, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!” And then, childishly, hurting Rusty’s heart even in his shock: “I take it back!”
6
“I gotta go back,” Gendron said. He took off his Sea Dogs cap and wiped his bloody, grimy, pallid face with it. His nose had swollen until it looked like a giant’s thumb. His eyes peered out of dark circles. “I’m sorry, but my schnozz is hurting like hell, and … well, I ain’t as young as I used to be. Also …” He raised his arms and dropped them. They were facing each other, and Barbie would have taken the guy in his arms and given him a pat on the back, if it were possible.
“Shock to the system, isn’t it?” he asked Gendron.
Gendron gave a bark of laughter. “That copter was the final touch.” And they both looked toward the fresh column of smoke.
Barbie and Gendron had gone on from the accident site on 117 after making sure that the witnesses were getting help for Elsa Andrews, the sole survivor. At least she didn’t seem badly hurt, although she was clearly heartbroken over the loss of her friend.
“Go on back, then. Slow. Take your time. Rest when you need to.”
“Pushing on?”
“Yes.”
“Still think you’re gonna find the end of it?”
Barbie was silent for a moment. At first he’d been sure, but now—
“I hope so,” he said.
“Well, good luck.” Gendron tipped his cap to Barbie before putting it back on. “I hope to shake your hand before the day’s out.”
“Me, too,” Barbie said. He paused. He had been thinking. “Can you do something for me, if you can get to your cell phone?”
“Sure.”
“Call the Army base at Fort Benning. Ask for the liaison officer and tell them you need to get in touch with Colonel James O. Cox. Tell them it’s urgent, that you’re calling for Captain Dale Barbara. Can you remember that?”
“Dale Barbara. That’s you. James Cox, that’s him. Got it.”
“If you reach him … I’m not sure you will, but if … tell him what’s going on here. Tell him if no one’s gotten in touch with Homeland Security, he’s the man. Can you do that?”
Gendron nodded. “If I can, I will. Good luck, soldier.”
Barbie could have done without ever having been called that again, but he touched a finger to his forehead. Then he went on, looking for what he no longer thought he would find.
7
He found a woods road that roughly paralleled the barrier. It was overgrown and disused, but much better than pushing through the puckerbrush. Every now and then he diverted to the west, feeling for the wall between Chester’s Mill and the outside world. It was always there.
When Barbie came to where 119 crossed into The Mill’s sister town of Tarker’s Mills, he stopped. The driver of the overturned delivery truck had been taken away by some good Samaritan on the other side of the barrier, but the truck itself lay blocking the road like a big dead animal. The back doors had sprung open on impact. The tar was littered with Devil Dogs, Ho Hos, Ring Dings, Twinkies, and peanut butter crackers. A young man in a George Strait tee-shirt sat on a stump, eating one of the latter. He had a cell phone in hand. He looked up at Barbie. “Yo. Did you come from …” He pointed vaguely behind Barbie. He looked tired and scared and disillusioned.
“From the other side of town,” Barbie said. “Right.”
“Invisible wall the whole way? Border closed?”
“Yes.”
The young man nodded and hit a button on his cell. “Dusty? You there yet?” He listened some more, then said: “Okay.” He ended the call. “My friend Dusty and I started east of here. Split up. He went south. We’ve been staying in touch by phone. When we can get through, that is. He’s where the copter crashed now. Says it’s getting crowded there.”
Barbie bet it was. “No break in this thing anywhere on your side?”
The young man shook his head. He didn’t say more, and didn’t need to. They could have missed breaks, Barbie knew that was possible—holes the size of windows or doors—but he doubted it.
He thought they were cut off.
WE ALL SUPPORT THE TEAM
1
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 saw 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 “the 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 breakfast-for-dinner and had to face Anson’s nuclear fried eggs. Still, it was good he was here, because in addition to the missing Angie, 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 to brainpower … jeez, what could you say? Her father—Andy Sanders, The Mill’s First Selectman—would never be a Mensa candidate, but Dodee made him 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 pla
ce 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, Stewart Bowie, was Fern’s older brother. Fern sometimes helped him out 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 saying what Barbie wanted to hear: that the airspace over Chester’s Mill had 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.”
“So it seems,” Barbie agreed. That she knew he had been leaving—and why—didn’t surprise him. He’d spent enough time in The Mill to know Julia Shumway knew everything worth knowing.
Rose saw him as she was serving beans and franks (plus a smoking relic that might once have been a pork chop) to a party of six crammed around a table for four. She froze with a plate in each hand and two more on her arm, eyes wide. Then she smiled. It was one full of undisguised happiness and relief, and it lifted his heart.
This is what home feels like, he thought. Goddamned if it isn’t.
“Good gravy, I never expected to see you again, Dale Barbara!”
“You still got my apron?” Barbie asked. A little shyly. Rose had taken him in, after all—just a drifter with a few scribbled references in his backpack—and given him work. She’d told him she completely understood why he felt he had to blow town, Junior Rennie’s dad wasn’t a fellow you wanted for an enemy, but Barbie still felt as if he’d left her in the lurch.
Rose put down her load of plates anywhere there was room for them and hurried to Barbie. She was a plump little woman, and she had to stand on tiptoe to hug him, but she managed.
“I’m so goddam glad to see you!” she whispered. Barbie hugged her back and kissed the top of her head.
“Big Jim and Junior won’t be,” he said. But at least neither Rennie was here; there was that to be grateful for. Barbie was aware that, for the time being, at least, he had become even more interesting to the assembled Millites than their very own town on national TV.
“Big Jim Rennie can blow me!” she said. Barbie laughed, delighted by her fierceness but glad for her discretion—she was still whispering. “I thought you were gone!”
“I almost was, but I got a late start.”
“Did you see … it?”
“Yes. Tell you later.” He released her, held her at arm’s length, and thought: If you were ten years younger, Rose … or even five …
“So I can have my apron back?”
She wiped the corners of her eyes and nodded. “Please take it back. Get Anson out of there before he kills us all.”
Barbie gave her a salute, then hooked around the counter into the kitchen and sent Anson Wheeler to the counter, telling him to take care of orders and cleanup there before helping Rose in the main room. Anson stepped back from the grill with a sigh of relief. Before going to the counter, he shook Barbie’s right hand in both of his. “Thank God, man—I never seen such a rush. I was lost.”
“Don’t worry. We’re gonna feed the five thousand.”
Anson, no Biblical scholar, looked blank. “Huh?”
“Never mind.”
The bell sitting in the corner of the pass-through binged. “Order up!” Rose called.
Barbie grabbed a spatula before taking the slip—the grill was a mess, it always was when Anson was engaged in those cataclysmic heat-induced changes he called cooking—then slipped his apron over his head, tied it in back, and checked the cabinet over the sink. It was full of baseball caps, which served Sweetbriar Rose grill-monkeys as chef’s toques. He selected a Sea Dogs cap in honor of Paul Gendron (now in the bosom of his nearest and dearest, Barbie hoped), yanked it on backward, and cracked his knuckles.
Then he grabbed the first slip and went to work.
2
By nine fifteen, more than an hour after their usual Saturday night closing time, Rose ushered the final patrons out. Barbie locked the door and turned the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. He watched those last four or five cross the street to the town common, where there were as many as fifty people gathered and talking among themselves. They were facing south, where a great white light formed a bubble over 119. Not TV lights, Barbie judged; that was the U.S. Army, creating and securing a perimeter. And how did you secure a perimeter at night? Why, by posting sentries and lighting the dead zone, of course.
Dead zone. He didn’t like the sound of that.
Main Street, on the other hand, was unnaturally dark. There were electric lights shining in some of the buildings—where there were gennies at work—and battery-powered emergency lights shining in Burpee’s Department Store, the Gas & Grocery, Mill New & Used Books, Food City at the foot of Main Street Hill, and half a dozen others, but the streetlights were dark and there were candles shining in the windows of most of Main Street’s second-floor windows, where there were apartments.
Rose sat at a table in the middle of the room, smoking a cigarette (illegal in public buildings, but Barbie would never tell). She pulled the net off her head and gave Barbie a wan smile as he sat down across from her. Behind them Anson was swabbing the counter, his own shoulder-length hair now liberated from its Red Sox cap.
“I thought Fourth of July was bad, but this was worse,” Rose said. “If you hadn’t turned up, I’d be curled in the corner, screaming for my mommy.”
“There was a blonde in an F-150,” Barbie said, smiling at the memory. “She almost gave me a ride. If she had, I might’ve been out. On the other hand, what happened to Chuck Thompson and the woman in that airplane with him might have happened to me.” Thompson’s name had been part of CNN’s coverage; the woman hadn’t been identified.
But Rose knew. “It was Claudette Sanders. I’m almost sure it was. Dodee told me yesterday that her mom had a lesson today.”
There was a plate of french fries between them on the table. Barbie had been reaching for one. Now he stopped. All at once he didn’t want any more fries. Any more of anything. And the red puddle on the side of the plate looked more like blood than ketchup.
“So that’s why Dodee didn’t come in.”
Rose shrugged. “Maybe. I can’t say for sure. I haven’t heard from her. Didn’t really expect to, with the phones out.”
Barbie assumed she meant the lan
dlines, but even from the kitchen he’d heard people complaining about trouble getting through on their cells. Most assumed it was because everyone was trying to use them at the same time, jamming the band. Some thought the influx of TV people—probably hundreds by this time, toting Nokias, Motorolas, iPhones, and BlackBerries—was causing the problem. Barbie had darker suspicions; this was a national security situation, after all, in a time when the whole country was paranoid about terrorism. Some calls were getting through, but fewer and fewer as the evening went on.
“Of course,” Rose said, “Dodes might also have taken it into that air head of hers to blow off work and go to the Auburn Mall.”
“Does Mr. Sanders know it was Claudette in the plane?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I’d be awfully surprised if he doesn’t by now.” And she sang, in a small but tuneful voice: “It’s a small town, you know what I mean?”
Barbie smiled a little and sang the next line back to her: “Just a small town, baby, and we all support the team.” It was from an old James McMurtry song that had the previous summer gained a new and mysterious two-month vogue on a couple of western Maine c&w stations. Not WCIK, of course; James McMurtry was not the sort of artist Jesus Radio supported.
Rose pointed to the french fries. “You going to eat any more of those?”
“Nope. Lost my appetite.”
Barbie had no great love for either the endlessly grinning Andy Sanders or for Dodee the Dim, who had almost certainly helped her good friend Angie spread the rumor that had caused Barbie’s trouble at Dipper’s, but the idea that those body parts (it was the green-clad leg his mind’s eye kept trying to look at) had belonged to Dodee’s mother … the First Selectman’s wife …
“Me too,” Rose said, and put her cigarette out in the ketchup. It made a pfisss sound, and for one awful moment Barbie thought he was going to throw up. He turned his head and gazed out the window onto Main Street, although there was nothing to see from in here. From in here it was all dark.