by Stephen King
"All right," he said, "listen close. It should be Missus Everett's van that goes out to the box, but we need it over here first." He pointed to the Odyssey. "You sure about the windows bein rolled up, Missus? You gotta be sure, because lives are gonna depend on it."
"They were rolled up," Linda said. "We were using the air-conditioner."
Sam looked at Rusty. "You're gonna drive it over here, Doc, but the first thing you do, is turn off the fac'try air. You understand why, right?"
"To protect the environment inside the cabin."
"Some of the bad air'll get in when you open the door, sure, but not much if you're quick. There'll be good air inside still. Town air. The folks inside can breathe easy all the way to the box. That old van's no good, and not just because the windows're open--"
"We had to," Norrie said, looking at the stolen phone company van. "The air-conditioning was busted. G-Grampy said. " A tear rolled slowly out of her left eye and cut through the dirt on her cheek. There was dirt everywhere now, and soot, almost too fine to see, sifting down from the murky sky.
"That's fine, honey," Sam told her. "The tires ain't worth a tin shit, anyway. One look and you know whose used car lot that pup came from."
"Guess that means my van if we need another vehicle," Rommie said. "I'll get it."
But Sam was shaking his head. "It better be Missus Shumway's car, on account of the tires are smaller and easier to handle. Also, they're brand-new. The air inside them'll be fresher."
Joe McClatchey broke into a sudden grin. "The air from the tires! Put the air from the tires in the garbage bags! Homemade scuba tanks! Mr. Verdreaux, that is genius !"
Sloppy Sam grinned himself, showing all six of his remaining teeth. "Can't take the credit, son. Pete Bergeron gets the credit. He told about a couple of men got trapped behind that fire in Bar Harbor after it went and crowned. They were okay, but the air wasn't fit to breathe. So what they did was bust the cap off a pulp-truck tire and took turns breathin right from the stem until the wind cleared the air. Pete said they told him it was nasty-tasting, like old dead fish, but it kep em alive."
"Will one tire be enough?" Julia asked.
"Might be, but we dassn't trust the spare if it's one of those little emergency doughnuts built to get you twenty miles down the highway and no more."
"It's not," Julia said. "I hate those things. I asked Johnny Carver to get me a new one, and he did." She looked toward town. "I suppose Johnny's dead now. Carrie, too."
"We better take one off the car as well, just to be safe," Barbie said. "You've got your jack, right?"
Julia nodded.
Rommie Burpee grinned without much humor. "I'll race you back here, Doc. Your van against Julia's hybrid."
"I'll drive the Prius over," Piper said. "You stay where you are, Rommie. You look like shit."
"Nice talk from a minister," Rommie grumbled. "You ought to be thankful I still feel lively enough to talk some trash." In truth Reverend Libby looked far from lively, but Julia handed over her keys anyway. None of them looked ready to go out drinking and juking, and Piper was in better shape than some; Claire McClatchey was as pale as milk.
"Okay," Sam said. "We got one other little problem, but first--"
"What?" Linda asked. "What other problem?"
"Don't worry about that now. First let's get our rollin iron over here. When do you want to try it?"
Rusty looked at The Mill's Congregational minister. Piper nodded. "No time like the present," Rusty said.
3
The remaining townies watched, but not alone. Cox and almost a hundred other soldiers had gathered on their side of the Dome, looking on with the silent attention of spectators at a tennis match.
Rusty and Piper hyperventilated at the Dome, loading their lungs with as much oxygen as possible. Then they ran, hand-in-hand, toward the vehicles. When they got there they separated. Piper stumbled to one knee, dropping the Prius keys, and all the watchers groaned.
Then she snatched them from the grass and was up again. Rusty was already in the Odyssey van with the motor running as she opened the door of the little green car and flung herself inside.
"Hope they remembered to turn off the air-conditioning," Sam said.
The vehicles turned in almost perfect tandem, the Prius shadowing the much larger van like a terrier herding a sheep. They drove quickly to the Dome, bouncing over the rough ground. The exiles scattered before them, Alva carrying Alice Appleton and Linda with a coughing Little J under each arm.
The Prius stopped less than a foot away from the dirty barrier, but Rusty swung the Odyssey around and backed it in.
"Your husband's got a good set of balls on him and an even better set of lungs," Sam told Linda matter-of-factly.
"It's because he gave up smoking," Linda said, and either did not hear Twitch's strangled snort or affected not to.
Good lungs or not, Rusty didn't linger. He slammed the door behind him and hustled to the Dome. "Piece of cake," he said ... and began to cough.
"Is the air inside the van breathable, like Sam said?"
"Better than what's here." He laughed distractedly. "But he's right about something else--every time the doors open, a little more good air gets out and a little more bad air gets in. You probably can get out to the box without tire-air, but I don't know if you can get back without it."
"They ain't gonna be driving, neither one of them," Sam said. " I'm gonna drive."
Barbie felt his lips turn up in the first genuine grin to grace his face in days. "Thought you lost your license."
"Don't see any cops out here," Sam said. He turned to Cox. "What about you, Cap? See any local yokels or County Mounties?"
"Not a one," Cox said.
Julia drew Barbie aside. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Yes."
"You know the chances hover somewhere between slim and none, right?"
"Yes."
"How are you at begging, Colonel Barbara?"
He flashed back to the gym in Fallujah: Emerson kicking one prisoner's balls so hard they flew up in front of him, Hackermeyer pulling another up by his keffiyeh and putting a gun to his head. The blood had hit the wall like it always hits the wall, right back to the time when men fought with clubs.
"I don't know," he said. "All I know is it's my turn."
4
Rommie, Pete Freeman, and Tony Guay jacked up the Prius and pulled off one of the working tires. It was a small car, and under ordinary circumstances they might have been able to lift the rear end with their bare hands. Not now. Although the car was parked close to the fans, they had to run back to the Dome repeatedly for air before the job was done. In the end, Rose took over for Tony, who was coughing too hard to continue.
Finally, though, they had two new tires leaning against the Dome.
"So far, so good," Sam said. "Now for that other little problem. I hope somebody's got an idear, because I sure don't."
They looked at him.
"My friend Peter said those guys busted off the valve and breathed direct from the tire, but that ain't gonna work here. Gotta fill up those garbage bags, and that means a bigger hole. You can punch into the tires, but without somethin to stick in the holes--somethin like a straw--you're gonna lose more air than you catch. So ... what's it gonna be?" He looked around hopefully. "Nobody brought a tent, I don't suppose? One of them with the hollow aluminum poles?"
"The girls have a play-tent," Linda said, "but it's back home in the garage." Then she remembered that the garage was gone, along with the house it was attached to, and laughed wildly.
"How about the barrel of a pen?" Joe asked. "I've got a Bic...."
"Not big enough," Barbie said. "Rusty? What about the ambulance?"
"A trach tube?" Rusty asked doubtfully, then answered his own question. "No. Still not big enough."
Barbie turned. "Colonel Cox? Any ideas?"
Cox shook his head reluctantly. "We've probably got a thousand things over here that would wor
k, but that doesn't help much."
"We can't let this stop us!" Julia said. Barbie heard frustration and a raw edge of panic in her voice. "Never mind the bags! We'll take the tires and breathe directly from them!"
Sam was already shaking his head. "Not good enough, Missus. Sorry, but it's not."
Linda bent close to the Dome, took several deep breaths, held the last. Then she went to the back of her Odyssey van, rubbed some of the soot from the back window, and peered in. "The bag's still there," she said. "Thank God."
"What bag?" he asked, taking her by the shoulders.
"The one from Best Buy with your birthday present in it. November eighth, or did you forget?"
"I did. On purpose. Who the hell wants to turn forty? What is it?"
"I knew if I brought it in the house before I was ready to wrap it, you'd find it...." She looked at the others, her face solemn and as dirty as a street-urchin's. "He's a nosy old thing. So I left it in the van."
"What did you get him, Linnie?" Jackie Wettington asked.
"I hope a present for all of us," Linda said.
5
When they were ready, Barbie, Julia, and Sloppy Sam hugged and kissed everybody, even the kids. There was little hope in the faces of the nearly two dozen exiles who would remain behind. Barbie tried to tell himself it was just because they were exhausted and now chronically short of breath, but he knew better. These were goodbye kisses.
"Good luck, Colonel Barbara," Cox said.
Barbie gave him a brief nod of acknowledgment, then turned to Rusty. Rusty who really mattered, because he was under the Dome. "Don't give up hope, and don't let them give up hope. If this doesn't work, take care of them as long as you can and as well as you can."
"I hear you. Give it your best shot."
Barbie tilted his head toward Julia. "It's mostly her shot, I think. And hell, maybe we'll make it back even if it doesn't work."
"Sure you will," Rusty said. He sounded hearty, but what he believed was in his eyes.
Barbie slapped him on the shoulder, then joined Sam and Julia at the Dome, once more taking deep breaths of the fresh air that came trickling through. To Sam he said, "Are you sure you really want to do this?"
"Ayuh. I got somethin to make up for."
"What would that be, Sam?" Julia asked.
"I druther not say." He smiled a little. "Specially not to the town newspaper lady."
"You ready?" Barbie asked Julia.
"Yes." She grabbed his hand, gave it one brief hard squeeze. "As much as I can be."
6
Rommie and Jackie Wettington stationed themselves at the rear doors of the van. When Barbie shouted "Go!" Jackie opened the doorgate and Rommie threw the two Prius tires inside. Barbie and Julia hurled themselves in directly after, and the doors were slammed behind them a split-second later. Sam Verdreaux, old and booze-raddled but still spry as a cricket, was already behind the Odyssey's wheel and revving the engine.
The air inside the van stank of what was now the outside world--an aroma that was charred wood on top and a painty, turpentine-y stench beneath--but it was still better than what they had been breathing at the Dome, even with dozens of fans blasting.
Won't be better for long, Barbie thought. Not with three of us sucking it up.
Julia grabbed the distinctive yellow-and-black Best Buy sack and turned it over. What fell out was a plastic cylinder with the words PERFECT ECHO on it. And, beneath that: 50 RECORDABLE CDS. She began to pick at the sealed cellophane overwrap with no immediate success. Barbie reached for his pocketknife, and his heart sank. The knife wasn't there. Of course not. It was now just a hunk of slag under whatever remained of the PD.
"Sam! Please tell me you have a pocketknife!"
Without a word, Sam tossed one back. "That was my dad's. I been carryin it my whole life, and I want it back."
The knife's sides were wood-inlay rubbed almost smooth with age, but when he opened it, the single blade was sharp. It would work on the overwrap, and it would make nice neat punctures in the tires.
"Hurry up!" Sam yelled, and revved the Odyssey's engine harder.
"We ain't goin till you tell me you got the right thing, and I doubt the engine'll run forever in this air!"
Barbie slit the overwrap. Julia stripped it away. When she rotated the plastic cylinder half a turn to the left, it came off the base. The blank CDs that had been meant for Rusty Everett's birthday sat on a black plastic spindle. She dumped the CDs on the floor of the van, then closed her fist around the spindle. Her mouth tightened with effort.
"Let me do tha--" he said, but then she snapped it off.
"Girls are strong, too. Especially when they're scared to death."
"Is it hollow? If it isn't, we're back to square one."
She held the spindle up to her face. Barbie looked down one end and saw her blue eye staring back from the other. "Go, Sam," he said. "We're in business."
"You sure it'll work?" Sam shouted back, dropping the van's transmission into drive.
"You bet!" Barbie returned, because How the hell should I know would cheer nobody up. Including himself.
7
The survivors at the Dome watched silently as the van tore down the dirt track that led back to what Norrie Calvert had taken to calling "the flash-box." The Odyssey dimmed into the hanging smog, became a phantom, and then disappeared.
Rusty and Linda were standing together, each carrying a child. "What do you think, Rusty?" Linda asked.
He said, "I think we need to hope for the best."
"And prepare for the worst?"
"That too," he said.
8
They were passing the farmhouse when Sam called back, "We're goin into the orchard now. You want to hold onto your jockstraps, kiddies, because I ain't stoppin this bitch even if I rip the undercarriage right out'n it."
"Go for it," Barbie said, and then a vicious bump tossed him in the air with his arms wrapped around one of the spare tires. Julia was clutching the other one like a shipwreck victim clutching a life ring. Apple trees flashed by. The leaves looked dirty and dispirited. Most of the fruit had fallen to the ground, shaken free by the wind that had sucked through the orchard after the explosion.
Another tremendous bump. Barbie and Julia went up and came down together, Julia sprawling across Barbie's lap and still holding onto her tire.
"Where'd you get your license, you old fuck?" Barbie shouted. "Sears and Roebuck?"
"Walmart!" the old man shouted back. "Everything's cheaper at Wally World!" Then he stopped cackling. "I see it. I see the blinkyass whoremaster. Bright purple light. Gonna pull right up beside it. You wait until I stop before you go carvin on those tires, less you want to tear em wide open."
A moment later he stamped on the brake and brought the Odyssey to a scrunching halt that sent Barbie and Julia sliding into the back of the rear seat. Now I know what a pinball feels like, Barbie thought.
"You drive like a Boston cabbie!" Julia said indignantly.
"You just make sure you tip"--Sam was stopped by a hard fit of coughing--"twenty percent." His voice sounded choked.
"Sam?" Julia asked. "Are you all right?"
"Maybe not," he said matter-of-factly. "I'm bleedin somewhere. Could be throat, but it feels deeper. B'lieve I might have ruptured a lung." Then he was coughing again.
"What can we do?" Julia asked.
Sam got the coughing under control. "Make em shut off their fuckin jammer so we can get out of here. I got no more smokes."
9
"This is all me," Julia said. "Just so you know that."
Barbie nodded. "Yessum."
"You're strictly my air-boy. If what I try doesn't work, we can change jobs."
"It might help if I knew exactly what you had in mind."
"There's nothing exact about it. All I have is intuition and a little hope."
"Don't be such a pessimist. You've also got two tires, two garbage bags, and a hollow spindle."
She smiled
. It lit up her tense, dirty face. "Duly noted."
Sam was coughing again, doubled over the wheel. He spat something out. "Dear God and sonny Jesus, don't that taste nasty," he said. "Hurry up. "
Barbie punctured his tire with the knife and heard the pwoosh of air as soon as he pulled the blade free. Julia slapped the spindle into his hand as efficiently as an OR nurse. Barbie jammed it into the hole, saw the rubber grip it ... and then felt a divine rush of air spurt into his sweaty face. He breathed deeply once, unable to help himself. The air was much fresher, much richer, than that pushed through the Dome by the fans. His brain seemed to wake up, and he came to an immediate decision. Instead of putting a garbage bag over their makeshift nozzle, he tore a large, ragged swatch from one of them.
"What are you doing ?" Julia screamed.
There was no time to tell her she wasn't the only one with intuitions.
He plugged the spindle with the plastic. "Trust me. Just go to the box and do what you have to do."
She gave him a final look that seemed to be all eyes, then opened the Odyssey's doorgate. She half fell to the ground, picked herself up, stumbled over a hummock, and went to her knees beside the flash-box. Barbie followed her with both tires. He had Sam's knife in his pocket. He fell on his knees and offered Julia the tire with the black spindle sticking out of it.
She yanked the plug, breathed in--her cheeks hollowing with the effort--exhaled to one side, then breathed in again. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, cutting clean places there. Barbie was crying, too. It had nothing to do with emotion; it was if they had been caught out in the world's nastiest acid rain. This was far worse than the air at the Dome.
Julia sucked in more. "Good," she said, speaking on the exhale and almost whistling the word. "So good. Not fishy. Dusty." She breathed in again, then tilted the tire toward him.
He shook his head and pushed it back, although his lungs were beginning to pound. He patted his chest, then pointed at her.