If he sees us, I'm going to run him down, she thought. The idea brought a certain perverse calm.

Thibodeau opened the back door of the Hummer. Peter Randolph got out.

'That man is picking his seat,' Alice Appleton informed the company at large. 'My mother says that means you're going to the movies.'

Thurston Marshall burst out laughing, and Linda, who would have said she didn't have a laugh anywhere in her, joined him. Soon they were all laughing, even Aidan, who certainly didn't know what they were laughing about. Linda wasn't sure she did, either.

Randolph headed down the hill on foot, still yanking at the seat of his uniform trousers. There was no reason for it to be as funny, and that made it funnier.

Not wanting to be left out, Audrey began to bark.

6

Somewhere a dog was barking.

Big Jim heard it, but didn't bother turning around. Watching Peter Randolph stride down the hill suffused him with well-being.

'Look at him picking his pants out of his butt,' Carter remarked. 'My father used to say that meant you were going to the movies.'

'The only place he's going is out to WCIK,' Big Jim said, 'and if he's bullheaded about making a frontal assault, it's likely to be the last place he ever goes. Let's go down to the Town Hall and watch this carnival on TV for awhile. When that becomes tiresome, I want you to find the hippy doctor and tell him if he tries to scoot off somewhere, we'll run him down and throw him in jail.'

'Yes, sir.' This was duty he didn't mind. Maybe he could take another run at ex-officer Everett, this time get her pants off.

Big Jim put the Hummer in gear and rolled slowly down the hill, honking at people who didn't; get out of his way quickly enough.

As soon as he had turned into the Town Hall driveway, the Odyssey van rolled through the intersection and headed out of town. There was no foot traffic on Upper Highland Street, and Linda accelerated rapidly. Thurse Marshall began singing 'The Wheels on the Bus,' and soon all the kids were singing with him.

Linda, who felt a little more terror leave her with each tenth of a mile the odometer turned, soon began to sing along.

7

Visitors Day has come to Chester's Mill, and a mood of eager anticipation fills the people walking out Route 119 toward the Dinsmore farm, where Joe McClatchey's demonstration went so wrong just five days ago. They are hopeful (if not exactly happy) in spite of that memory—also in spite of the heat and smelly air. The horizon beyond the Dome now appears blurred, and above the trees, the sky has darkened, due to accumulated particulate matter. It's better when you look straight up, but still not right; the blue has a yellowish cast, like a film of cataract on an old man's eye.

'It's how the sky used to look over the paper mills back in the seventies, when they were running full blast,' says Henrietta Clavard—she of the not-quite-broken ass. She offers her bottle of ginger ale to Petra Searles, who's walking beside her.

'No, thank you,' Petra says, 'I have some water.'

'Is it spiked with vodka?' Henrietta inquires.'Because this is. Half and half, sweetheart; I call it a Canada Dry Rocket.'

Petra takes the bottle and downs a healthy slug. 'Yow!' she says.

Henrietta nods in businesslike fashion.'Yes, ma'am. It's not fancy, but it does brighten up a person's day.'

Many of the pilgrims are carrying signs they plan on flashing to their visitors from the outside world (and to the cameras, of course) like the audience at a live network morning show. But network morning show signs are uniformly cheerful. Most of these are not. Some, left over from the previous Sunday's demo, read FIGHT THE POWER and LET US OUT, DAMMIT! There are new ones that say GOVERNMENT EXPERIMENT: WHY???. END THE COVER-UP, and WE'RE HUMAN BEINGS, NOT GUINEA PIGS. Johnny Carver's reads STOP WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING IN THE NAME OF GOD! BEFORE IT'S 2-LATEU Frieda Morrison's asks—ungrammatically but passionately—WHO'S CRIMES ARE WE DYING FOR? Bruce Yardley s is the only one to strike a completely positive note. Attached to a seven-foot stick and wrapped in blue crepe paper (at the Dome it will tower over all the others), it reads HELLO MOM & DAD IN CLEVELAND! LOVE YOU GUYS!

Nine or ten signs feature scriptural references. Bonnie Morrell, wife of the town's lumberyard owner, carries one that proclaims DON'T FORGIVE THEM, BECAUSETHEY DO KNOW WHAT THEY DO! Trma Cale's says THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD below a drawing of what is probably a sheep, although it's tough to be sure.

Donnie Baribeau's simply reads PRAY FOR US.

Marta Edmunds, who sometimes babysits for the Everetts, isn't among the pilgrims. Her ex-husband lives in South Portland, but she doubts if he'll show up, and what would she say if he did? You're behind on the alimony, cocksucker? She goes out Little Bitch Road instead of down Route 119. The advantage is that she doesn't have to walk. She takes her Acura (and runs the air-conditioning full blast). Her destination is the cozy little house where Clayton Brassey has spent his declining years. He is her great-great uncle once removed (or some damn thing), and while she isn't quite sure of either their kinship or degree of separation, she knows he has a generator. If it's still working, she can watch on TV. She also wants to assure herself that Uncle Clayt's still okay—or as okay as it's possible to be when you're a hundred and five and your brains have turned to Quaker Oatmeal.

He's not okay. Clayton Brassey has given up the mantle of oldest living town resident. He's sitting in the living room in his favorite chair with his chipped enamel urinal in his lap and the Boston Post cane leaning against the wall nearby, and he's cold as a cracker.There's no sign of Nell Toomey, his great-great granddaughter and chief caregiver; she's gone out to the Dome with her brother and sister-in-law.

Marta says, 'Oh, Unc—I'm sorry, but probably it was time.'

She goes into the bedroom, gets a fresh sheet from the closet, and tosses it over the old man. The result makes him look a bit like a covered piece of furniture in an abandoned house. A highboy, perhaps. Marta can hear the gennie putting away out back and thinks what the hell. She turns on the TV, tunes it to CNN, and sits on the couch. What's unfolding on-screen almost makes her forget she's keeping company with a corpse.

It's an aerial shot, taken with a powerful distance lens from a helicopter hovering above the Motton flea market where the visitor buses will park.The early starters inside the Dome have already arrived. Behind them comes the hay. two-lane blacktop filled from side to side and stretching all the way back to Food City. The similarity of the town's citizens to trekking ants is unmistakable.

Some newscaster is blabbing away, using words like wonderful and amazing. The second time he says I have never seen anything like this, Marta mutes the sound, thinking Nobody has, you dummocks. She is thinking about getting up and seeing what there might be in the kitchen to snack on (maybe that's wrong with a corpse in the room, but she's hungry, dammit), when the picture goes to a split screen. On the left half, another helicopter is now tracking the line of buses heading out of Castle Rock, and the super at the bottom of the screen reads VISITORS TO ARRIVE SHORTLY AFTER 10 a.m.

There's time to fix a little something, after all. Marta finds crackers, peanut butter, and—best of all—three cold bottles of Bud. She takes everything back into the living room on a tray and settles in. 'Thanks, Unc,' she says.

Even with the sound off (especially with the sound off), the juxtaposed images are riveting, hypnotic. As the first beer hits her (joyously!), Marta realizes it's like waiting for an irresistible force to meet an immovable object, and wondering if there will be an explosion when they come together.

Not far from the gathering crowd, on the knoll where he has been digging his father's grave, Ollie Dinsmore leans on his spade and watches the crowd arrive: two hundred, then four, then eight. Eight hundred at least. He sees a woman with a baby on her back in one of those Papoose carriers, and wonders if she's insane, bringing a kid that small out in this heat, without even a hat to protect its head. The arriving townsfolk stand in the hazy sun, watching and waiting anxiously for the buses. Ollie thinks what a slow, sad walk they are going to have once the hoopla's over. All the way back to town in the simmering late-afternoon heat. Then he turns once more to the job at hand.

Behind the growing crowd, on both shoulders of 119, the police—a dozen mostly new officers led by Henry Morrison—park with their flashers throbbing. The last two police cars are late arriving, because Henry ordered them to fill their trunks with containers of water from the spigot at the Fire Department, where, he has discovered, the generator is not only working but looks good to go for another couple of weeks. There's nowhere near enough water—a foolishly meager amount, in fact, given the size of the crowd—but it's the best they can do. They'll save it for the folks who faint in the sun. Henry hopes there won't be many, but he knows there will be some, and he curses Jim Rennie for the lack of preparation. He knows it's because Rennie doesn't give a damn, and to Henry's mind that makes the negligence worse.

He has ridden out with Pamela Chen, the only one of the new 'special deputies' he completely trusts, and when he sees the size of the crowd, he tells her to call the hospital. He wants the ambulance out here, standing by. She comes back five minutes later with news Henry finds both incredible and completely unsurprising. One of the patients answered the phone at reception, Pamela says—a young woman who came in early this morning with a broken wrist. She says all the medical personnel is gone, and the ambulance is gone, too.

'Well, that's just great,' Henry says. 'I hope your first aid skills are up to snuff, Pammie, because you may have to use them.'

'I can give CPR,' she says.

'Good.' He points to Joe Boxer, the Eggo-loving dentist. Boxer is wearing a Hue armband and self-importandy waving people to either side of the road (most pay no attention). 'And if someone gets a toothache, that self-important prick can pull it for them.'

'If they've got the cash to pay' Pamela says. She has had experience of Joe Boxer, when her wisdom teeth came in. He said something about 'trading one service for another' while eying her breasts in a way she didn't care for at all.

'I think there's a Red Sox hat in the back of my car,' Henry says. 'If so, would you take it over there?' He points to the woman Ollie has already noticed, the one with the bareheaded baby. 'Put it on the kid and tell that woman she's an idiot.'

'Ill take the hat but I won't tell her any such thing,' Pamela says quietly. 'That's Mary Lou Costas. She's seventeen, she's been married for a year to a trucker who's almost twice her age, and she's probably hoping he comes to see her.'

Henry sighs. 'She's still an idiot, but I guess at seventeen we all are.'

And still they come. One man appears to have no water, but he is carrying a large boombox that's blaring WCIK gospel. Two of his friends are unfurling a banner.The words on it are flanked by gigantic, clumsily drawn Q-Tips. PLEASE RES-Q US, the sign reads.

'This is going to be bad,' Henry says, and of course he is right, but he has no idea how bad.

The growing crowd waits in the sun. The ones with weak bladders wander into the underbrush west of the road to pee. Most get scratched up before finding relief. One overweight woman (Mabel Alston; she also suffers from what she calls the dia-betties) sprains her ankle and lies there hollering until a couple of men come over and get her on her remaining good foot. Lennie Meechum, the town postmaster (at least until this week, when delivery of the U.S. mail was canceled for the foreseeable future), borrows a cane for her.Then he tells Henry that Mabel needs a ride back to town. Henry says he can't spare a car. She'll have to rest in the shade, he says.

Lennie waves his arms at both sides of the road. 'In case you didn't notice, it's cow-pasture on one side and brambles on the other. No shade to speak of

Henry points to the Dinsmore dairy barn.'Plenty of shade there.'

'It's a quarter of a mile away!' Lennie says indignantly.