Under the Dome

The thing on the edge of the McCoy Orchard was dark gray instead of white, and rather than the familar apple logo stamped on top of it, Rusty observed this somehow troubling symbol:

Above the symbol was a hooded excrescence about the size of the knuckle on his little finger. Inside the hood was a lens made of either glass or crystal. It was from this that the spaced purple flashes were coming.

Rusty bent and touched the surface of the generator—if it was a generator. A strong shock immediately surged up his arm and through his body. He tried to pull back and couldn’t. His muscles were locked up tight. The Geiger counter gave a single bray, then fell silent. Rusty had no idea whether or not the needle swung into the danger zone, because he couldn’t move his eyes, either. The light was leaving the world, funneling out of it like water going down a bathtub drain, and he thought with sudden calm clarity: I’m going to die. What a stupid way to g—

Then, in that darkness, faces arose—only they weren’t human faces, and later he would not be sure they were faces at all. They were geometric solids that seemed to be padded in leather. The only parts of them that looked even vaguely human were diamond shapes on the sides. They could have been ears. The heads—if they were heads—turned to each other, either in discussion or something that could have been mistaken for it. He thought he heard laughter. He thought he sensed excitement. He pictured children in the play-yard at East Street Grammar—his girls, perhaps, and their friend Deanna Carver—exchanging snacks and secrets at recess.

All of this happened in a space of seconds, surely no more than four or five. Then it was gone. The shock dissipated as suddenly and completely as it did when people first touched the surface of the Dome; as quickly as his lightheadedness and the accompanying vision of the dummy in the crooked tophat. He was just kneeling at the top of the ridge overlooking the town, and sweltering in his leaden accessories.

Yet the image of those leatherheads remained. Leaning together and laughing in obscenely childish conspiracy.

The others are down there watching me. Wave. Show them you’re all right.

He raised both hands over his head—now they moved smoothly—and waved them slowly back and forth, just as if his heart were not pounding like a jackrabbit in his chest, as if sweat weren’t running down his chest in sharply aromatic rivulets.

Below, on the road, Rommie and the kids waved back.

Rusty took several deep breaths to calm himself, then held the Geiger counter’s sensor tube out to the flat gray square, which sat on a spongy mat of grass. The needle wavered just below the +5 mark. A background count, no more.

Rusty had little doubt that this flat square object was the source of their troubles. Creatures—not human beings, creatures—were using it to keep them prisoner, but that wasn’t all. They were also using it to observe.

And having fun. The bastards were laughing. He had heard them.

Rusty stripped off the apron, draped it over the box with its slightly protruding lens, got up, backed away. For a moment nothing happened. Then the apron caught fire. The smell was pungent and nasty. He watched the shiny surface blister and bubble, watched the flames erupt. Then the apron, which was essentially no more than a plastic-coated sheet of lead, simply fell apart. For a moment there were burning pieces, the biggest one still lying on top of the box. A moment later, the apron—or what remained of it—disinte-grated. A few swirling bits of ash remained—and the smell—but otherwise… poof. Gone.

Did I see that? Rusty asked himself, then said it aloud, asking the world. He could smell roasted plastic and a heavier smell that he supposed was smelted lead—insane, impossible—but the apron was gone nonetheless.

“Did I actually see that?”

As if in answer, the purple light flashed out of the hooded knuckle on top of the box. Were those pulses renewing the Dome, the way the touch of a finger on a computer keyboard could refresh the screen? Were they allowing the leatherheads to watch the town? Both? Neither?

He told himself not to approach the flat square again. He told himself the smartest thing he could do would be to run back to the van (without the weight of the apron, he could run) and then drive like hell, slowing only to pick up his companions waiting below.

Instead he approached the box again and dropped to his knees before it, a posture too much like worship for his liking.