Under the Dome: A Novel by Stephen King Page B

branches had been sheared off, creating pathways to the sky where previously there had been none. Stumps had been cut in half. And there were feathered corpses everywhere.
    “Lotta dead birds,” Gendron said. He resettled his cap on his head with hands that trembled slightly. His face was pale. “Never seen so many.”
    “Are you all right?” Barbie asked.
    “Physically? Yeah, I think so. Mentally, I feel like I’ve lost my frickin mind. How about you?”
    “Same,” Barbie said.
    Two miles west of 119, they came to God Creek Road and the body of Bob Roux, lying beside his still-idling tractor. Barbie moved instinctively toward the downed man and once again bumped the barrier … although this time he remembered at the last second and slowed in time to keep from bloodying his nose again.
    Gendron knelt and touched the farmer’s grotesquely cocked neck. “Dead.”
    “What’s that littered all around him? Those white scraps?”
    Gendron picked up the largest piece. “I think it’s one of thosecomputer-music doohickies. Musta broke when he hit the …” He gestured in front of him. “The you-know.”
    From the direction of town a whooping began, hoarser and louder than the town whistle had been.
    Gendron glanced toward it briefly. “Fire siren,” he said. “Much good it’ll do.”
    “FD’s coming from Castle Rock,” Barbie said. “I hear them.”
    “Yeah? Your ears are better’n mine, then. Tell me your name again, friend.”
    “Dale Barbara. Barbie to my friends.”
    “Well, Barbie, what now?”
    “Go on, I guess. We can’t do anything for this guy.”
    “Nope, can’t even call anyone,” Gendron said gloomily. “Not with my cell back there. Guess you don’t have one?”
    Barbie did, but he had left it behind in his now-vacated apartment, along with some socks, shirts, jeans, and underwear. He’d lit out for the territories with nothing but the clothes on his back, because there was nothing from Chester’s Mill he wanted to carry with him. Except a few good memories, and for those he didn’t need a suitcase or even a knapsack.
    All this was too complicated to explain to a stranger, so he just shook his head.
    There was an old blanket draped over the seat of the Deere. Gendron shut the tractor off, took the blanket, and covered the body.
    “I hope he was listenin to somethin he liked when it happened,” Gendron said.
    “Yeah,” Barbie said.
    “Come on. Let’s get to the end of this whatever-it-is. I want to shake your hand. Might even break down and give you a hug.”
    5

    Shortly after discovering Roux’s body—they were now very close to the wreck on 117, although neither of them knew it—they came toa little stream. The two men stood there for a moment, each on his own side of the barrier, looking in wonder and silence.
    At last Gendron said, “Holy jumped-up God.”
    “What does it look like from your side?” Barbie asked. All he could see on his was the water rising and spreading into the under-growth. It was as if the stream had encountered an invisible dam.
    “I don’t know how to describe it. I never seen anything quite like it.” Gendron paused, scratching both cheeks, drawing his already long face down so he looked a little like the screamer in that Edvard Munch painting. “Yes I have. Once. Sorta. When I brought home a couple of goldfish for my daughter’s sixth birthday. Or maybe she was seven that year. I brought em home from the pet store in a plastic bag, and that’s what this looks like—water in the bottom of a plastic bag. Only flat instead of saggin down. The water piles up against that … thing, then trickles off both ways on your side.”
    “Is none going through at all?”
    Gendron bent down, his hands on his knees, and squinted. “Yeah, some appears to go through. But not very much, just a trickle. And none of the crap the water’s carrying. You know, sticks and leaves and such.”
    They pushed on, Gendron on his side and Barbie on his. As yet,