What's not a man, it's a Halloween dummy.
Yes, sure. What else could it be, with green garden trowels for hands and a burlap head and stitched white crosses for eyes?
'Doc! Doc!' It was Rommie.
The Halloween dummy burst into flames.
A moment later it was gone. Now there was just the road, the ridgd, and the purple light, flashing at fifteen-second intervals, seeming to say Come on, come on, come on.
12
Rommie pulled open the driver's door. 'Doc... Rusty... you okay?'
'Fine. It came, it went. I assume it was the same for you. Rommie, did you see anything?'
'No. For a minute I t'ought I smelled fire. But I think that's cause the air smells so smoky'
'I saw a bonfire of burning pumpkins,'Joe said.'I told you that, right!?'
'Yes.' Rusty hadn't; attached enough significance to it, in spite of what he'd heard from his own daughter's mouth. Now he did.
'I heard screaming,' Benny said, 'but I forget the rest.'
'I heard it too,' Norrie said. 'It was daytime, but still dark. There was that screaming. And - I think - there was soot falling on my face.'
'Doc, maybe we better go back,' Rommie said.
'Isn't gonna happen,' Rusty said. 'Not if there's a chance I can get my kids - and everyone else's kids - out of here.'
'Bet some adults would like to go too,' Benny remarked. Joe threw him an elbow.
Rusty looked at the Geiger counter. The needle was pegged on +200. 'Stay here,' he said.
'Doc,' Joe said, 'what if the radiation gets heavy and you pass out? What do we do then?'
Rusty considered this. 'If I'm still close, drag me out of there. But not you, Norrie. Only the guys.'
'Why not me?' she asked.
'Because you might like to have kids someday. Ones with only two eyes and all the limbs attached in the right places.'
'Right. I'm totally here,' Norrie said.
'For the rest of you, short-term exposure should be okay. But I mean very short term. If I should go down halfway up the ridge or actually in the orchard, leave me.'
'Dat s harsh, Doc'
'I don't mean for good,' Rusty said. 'You've got more lead roll back at the store, don't you?'
'Yeah. We should have brought it.'
'I agree, but you can't think of everything. If worst comes to worst, get the rest of the lead roll, stick pieces in the windows of whatever you're driving, and scoop me up. Hell, by then I might be on my feet again and walking toward town.'
'Yeah. Or still layin knocked out an' gettin a lethal dose.'
'Look, Rommie, we're probably worrying about nothing. I think the wooziness - the actual passing-out, if you're a kid - is like the other Dome-related phenomena. You feel it once, then you're okay'
'You could be bettin your life on dat.'
'We've got to start placing bets at some point.'
'Good luck,'Joe said, and extended his fist through the window.
Rusty pounded it lightly, then did the same with Norrie and Benny. Rommie also extended his fist. 'What's good for the kids is good enough for me.'
13
Twenty yards beyond the place where Rusty had had the vision of the dummy in the stovepipe hat, the clicks from the Geiger counter mounted to a staticky roar. He saw the needle standing at +400, just into the red.
He pulled over and hauled out gear he would have preferred not to put on. He looked back at the others. 'A word of warning,' he said. 'And I'm talking to you in particular, Mr Benny Drake. If you laugh, you're walking home.'
'I won't laugh,' Benny said, but in short order they were all laughing, including Rusty himself. He took off his jeans, then pulled a pair of football practice pants up over his undershorts. Where pads on the thighs and bu**ocks should have gone, he stuffed precut pieces of lead roll. Then he donned a pair of catcher's shinguards and curved more lead roll over them. This was followed by a lead collar to shield his thyroid gland, and a lead apron to shield his testes. It was the biggest one they had, and hung all the way down to the bright orange shinguards. He had considered hanging another apron over his back (looking ridiculous was better than dying of lung cancer, in his view), and had decided against it. He had already pushed his weight to over three hundred pounds. And radiation didn't curve. If he faced the source, he thought he'd be okay.
Well. Maybe.
To this point, Romrnie and the kids had managed to restrict themselves to discreet chuckles and a few strangulated giggles. Control wavered when Rusty stuffed a size XL bathing cap with two pieces of lead roll and pulled it down over his head, but it wasn't until he yanked on the elbow-length gloves and added the goggles that they lost it entirely.
'It lives!' Benny cried, striding around with his arms outstretched like Frankenstein's monster. 'Master, it lives!'
Rommie staggered to the side of the road and sat on a rock, bellowing with laughter. Joe and Norrie collapsed on the road itself, rolling around like chickens taking a dustbath.
'Walking home, every one of you,' Rusty said, but he was smiling as he climbed (not without difficulty') back into the van.
Ahead of him, the purple light flashed out like a beacon.
14
Henry Morrison left the PD when the raucous, locker-room-at-halftime banter of the new recruits finally became too much to bear. It was going wrong, all of it. He supposed he'd known that even before Thibodeau, the thug who was now guarding Selectman Rennie, showed up with a signed order to can Jackie Wettington - a fine officer and an even finer woman.
Henry regarded this as the first move in what would probably be a comprehensive effort to remove the older officers, the ones Rennie would see as Duke Perkins partisans, from the force. He himself would be next. Freddy Denton and Rupert Libby would probably stay; Rupe was a moderate ass**le, Denton severe. Linda Everett would go. Probably Stacey Moggin, too. Then, except for that dimbulb Lauren Conree, the Chester's Mill PD would be an all-boys' club again.