Under the Dome

'Hang onto me, honey,' Henrietta says. 'Just hang onto me. We're going to be okay'

But when Petra looks into the old woman's eyes., she sees no belief and no hope. The party's almost over.

Look, now. Look and see. Eight hundred people are crammed against the Dome, their heads tilted up and their eyes wide, watching as their inevitable end rushes toward them.

Here are Johnny and Carrie Carver, and Bruce Yardley, who worked at Food City. Here is Tabby Morrell, who owns a lumberyard soon to be reduced to swirling ash, and his wife, Bonnie; Toby Manning, who clerked at the department store;Trina Cole and Donnie Baribeau; Wendy Goldstone with her friend and fellow teacher Ellen Vanedestine; Bill Allnut, who wouldn't go get the bus, and his wife, Sarah, who is screaming for Jesus to save her as she watches the oncoming fire. Here are Todd Wendlestat and Manuel Ortega with their faces raised dumbly to the west, where the world is disappearing in smoke.Tommy and Willow Anderson, who will never book another band from Boston into their roadhouse. See them all, a whole town with its back to an invisible wall.

Behind them, the visitors go from backing up to retreat, and from retreat into full flight. They ignore the buses and pound straight down the highway toward Motton. A few soldiers hold position, but most throw their guns down, tear after the crowd, and look back no more than Lot looked back at Sodom.

Cox doesn't flee. Cox approaches the Dome and shouts: 'You! Officer in charge!'

Henry Morrison turns, walks to the Colonel's position, and braces his hands on a hard and mystic surface he can't see. Breathing has become difficult; bad wind pushed by the firestorm hits the Dome, swirls, then backdrafts toward the hungry thing that's coming: a black wolf with red eyes. Here, on the Motton town line, is the lambfold where it will feed.

'Help us,' Henry says.

Cox looks at the firestorm and estimates it will reach the crowd's current position in no more than fifteen minutes, perhaps as few as three. It's not a fire or an explosion; in this closed and already polluted environment, it is a cataclysm.

'Sir, I cannot,' he says.

Before Henry can reply, Joe Boxer grabs his arm. He is gibbering.

'Quit it, Joe,' Henry says.'There's nowhere to run and nothing to do but pray.'

But Joe Boxer does not pray. He is still holding his stupid little hockshop pistol, and after a final crazed look at the oncoming inferno, he puts the gun to his temple like a man playing Russian roulette. Henry makes a grab for it, but is too late. Boxer pulls the trigger. Nor does he die at once, although a gout of blood flies from the side of his head. He staggers away, waving the stupid little pistol like a handkerchief, screaming. Then he falls to his knees, throws his hands up once to the darkening sky like a man in the grip of a godhead revelation, and collapses face-first on the broken white line of the highway.

Henry turns his stunned face back to Colonel Cox, who is simultaneously three feet and a million miles away. 'I'm so sorry, my friend,' Cox says.

Pamela Chen stumbles up. 'The bus!' she screams to Henry over the building roar.' We have to take the bus and drive straight through it! It's our only chance!'

Henry knows this is no chance at all, but he nods, gives Cox a final look (Cox will never forget the cop's hellish, despairing eyes), takes Pammie Chen's hand, and follows her to Bus 19 as the smoky blackness races toward them.