'Never mind that part for now,' Barbie said. 'There's a they, and if they really wanted to keep us out, they could. They're keeping the whqle world out of Chester's Mill. If they wanted to keep us away front their box, why not put a mini-Dome around it?'
'Or a harmonic sound that would cook our brains like chicken legs in a microwave,' Rusty suggested, getting into the spirit of the thing. 'Hell, real radiation, for that matter.'
'It might be real radiation,' Ernie said.'In fact, the Geiger counter you I brought up here pretty much confirmed that.'
'Yes,' Barbie agreed, 'but does that mean that what the Geiger counters registering is dangerous? Rusty and the kids aren't breaking out in lesions, or losing their hair, or vomiting up the linings of their stomachs.'
'At least not yet,' Jackie said.
'Dat's cheerful,' Rommie said.
Barbie ignored the byplay. 'Surely if they can create a barrier so strong it bounces back the best missiles America can throw at it, they could set up a radiation belt that would kill quickly, maybe instantly. It would even be in their interest to do so. A couple of grisly human deaths would be a lot more apt to discourage explorers than a bunch of dead animals. No, I think Julia's right, and the so-called radiation belt will turn out to be a harmless glow that's been spiced up to register on our detection equipment. Which probably seems pretty damn primitive to them, if they really are extraterrestrial.'
'But why?' Rusty burst out. 'Why any barrier? I couldn't lift the damn thing, I couldn't even rock it! And when I put a lead apron on it, the apron caught fire. Even though the box itself is cool to the touch!'
'If they're protecting it, there must be some way of destroying it or turning it off,' Jackie said. 'Except...'
Barbie was smiling at her. He felt strange, almost as if he were floating above his own head, 'Go on, Jackie. Say it.'
'Except they're not protecting it, are they? Not from people who are determined to approach it.'
'There's more,' Barbie said. 'Couldn't we say they're actually pointing at it? Joe McClatchey and his friends were practically following a trail of bread crumbs.'
'Here it is, puny Earthlings,' Rusty said.'What can you do about it, ye who are brave enough to approach?'
'That feels about right,' Barbie said. 'Come on. Let's get up there.'
2
'You better let me drive from here,' Rusty told Ernie. 'Up ahead's where the kids passed out. Rommie almost did. I felt it too. And I had a kind of hallucination. A Halloween dummy that burst into flames.'
'Another warning?' Ernie asked.
'I don't know.'
Rusty drove to where the woods ended and open, rocky land sloped up to the McCoy Orchard. Just ahead, the air glowed so brightly they had to squint, but there was no source; the brightness was just there, floating. To Barbie it looked like the sort of light fireflies gave off, only magnified a million times. The belt appeared to be about fifty yards wide. Beyond it, the world was again dark except for the pink glow of the moonlight.
'You're sure that faintness won't happen to you again?' Barbie asked.
'It seems to be like touching the Dome: the first time vaccinates you.' Rusty settled behind the wheel, dropped the transmission into drive, and said: 'Hang onto your false teeth, ladies and germs.'
He hit the gas hard enough to spin the rear tires. The van sped into| the glow. They were too well armored to see what happened nexti, but several people already on the ridge saw it from where they had been watching - with increasing anxiety - from the edge of the orchard. For a moment the van was clearly visible, as if centered in a spotlight. When it ran out of the glow-belt it continued to shine for sjeveral seconds, as if the stolen van had been dipped with radium. Andj it dragged a fading cometary tail of brightness behind it, like exhaust.
'Holy shit,' Benny said. 'It's like the best special effect I ever saw.'
Then the glow around the van faded and the tail disappeared.
3
As they passed through the glow-belt, Barbie felt a momentary lightheadedness; no more than that. For Ernie, the real world of this van and these people seemed to be replaced by a hotel room that smelled of pine and roared with the sound of Niagara Falls. And here was his ivife of just twelve hours coming to him, wearing a nightgown that I was really no more than a breath of lavender smoke, taking his hands and putting them on her br**sts and saying This time we don't have to stop, honey.
Then he heard Barbie shouting, and that brought him back.
'Rusty! She's having some kind of fit! Stop!'
Ernie looked around and saw Jackie Wettington shaking, her eyes rolled up in their sockets, her fingers splayed.
'He's holding up a cross and everything's burning!' she screamed. Spittle sprayed from her lips. "The world is burning! THE PEOPLE ARE BURNING!' She let loose a shriek that filled the van.
Rusty almost ditched the van, pulled back into the middle of the road, leaped out, and ran around to the side door. By the time Barbie slide it open, Jackie was wiping spit from her chin with a cupped hand. Rommie had his arm around her.
'Are you all right?' Rusty asked her.
'Now, yes. I just... it was... everything was on fire. It was day, but it was dark. People were b-b-burning...' She started to cry.
'You said something about a man with a cross,' Barbie said.
'A big white cross. It 'was on a string, or a piece of rawhide. It was on his chest. His bare chest. Then he held it up in front of his face.' She drew in a deep breath, let it out in little hitches. 'It's all fading now. But... hoo!'
Rusty held two fingers up in front of her and asked how many she saw. Jackie gave the correct answer, and followed his thumb when he moved it first from side to side, then up and down. He patted her on the shoulder, then looked mistrustfully back at the glow-belt. What was it Gollum had said of Bilbo Baggins? It's tricksy, precious. 'What about you, Barbie? Okay?'