Under the Dome: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

struck something where nothing had ever been before. Most broke their necks and fell in black clumps on Pretty Valley Road and the fields on both sides. Birds everywhere, on both sides of the Dome, crashed and fell dead;their bodies would be one of the ways the new barrier was eventually delineated.
    On God Creek Road, Bob Roux had been digging potatoes. He came in for lunch (more commonly known as “dinnah” in those parts), sitting astride his old Deere tractor and listening to his brand new iPod, a gift from his wife on what would prove to be his final birthday. His house was only half a mile from the field he’d been digging, but unfortunately for him, the field was in Motton and the house was in Chester’s Mill. He struck the barrier at fifteen miles an hour, while listening to James Blunt sing “You’re Beautiful.” He had the loosest of grips on the tractor’s steering wheel, because he could see the road all the way to his house and there was nothing on it. So when his tractor came to a smash-halt, the potato-digger rising up behind and then crashing back down, Bob was flung forward over the engine block and directly into the Dome. His iPod exploded in the wide front pocket of his bib overalls, but he never felt it. He broke his neck and fractured his skull on the nothing he collided with and died in the dirt shortly thereafter, by one tall wheel of his tractor, which was still idling. Nothing, you know, runs like a Deere.
    3

    At no point did the Motton Road actually run through Motton; it ran just inside the Chester’s Mill town line. Here were new residential homes, in an area that had been called Eastchester since 1975 or so. The owners were thirty- and fortysomethings who commuted to Lewiston-Auburn, where they worked for good wages, mostly in white-collar jobs. All of these homes were in The Mill, but many of their backyards were in Motton. This was the case with Jack and Myra Evans’s home at 379 Motton Road. Myra had a vegetable garden behind their house, and although most of the goodies had been harvested, there were still a few fat Blue Hubbard squashes beyond the remaining (and badly rotted) pumpkins. She was reaching for one of these when the Dome came down, and although her kneeswere in Chester’s Mill, she happened to be reaching for a Blue Hubbard that was growing a foot or so across the Motton line.
    She didn’t cry out, because there was no pain—not at first. It was too quick and sharp and clean for that.
    Jack Evans was in the kitchen, whipping eggs for a noontime frittata. LCD Soundsystem was playing—“North American Scum”—and Jack was singing along when a small voice spoke his name from behind him. He didn’t at first recognize the voice as belonging to his wife of fourteen years; it sounded like the voice of a child. But when he turned he saw it was indeed Myra. She was standing inside the doorway, holding her right arm across her middle. She had tracked mud onto the floor, which was very unlike her. Usually she took her garden shoes off on the stoop. Her left hand, clad in a filthy gardening glove, was cradling her right hand, and red stuff was running through the muddy fingers. At first he thought
Cranberry juice
, but only for a second. It was blood. Jack dropped the bowl he’d been holding. It shattered on the floor.
    Myra said his name again in that same tiny, trembling childvoice.
    “What happened? Myra, what happened to you?”
    “I had an accident,” she said, and showed him her right hand. Only there was no muddy right gardening glove to match the left one, and no right hand. Only a spouting stump. She gave him a weak smile and said “Whoops.” Her eyes rolled up to whites. The crotch of her gardening jeans darkened as her urine let go. Then her knees also let go and she went down. The blood gushing from her raw wrist—an anatomy lesson cutaway—mixed with the eggy batter splattered across the floor.
    When Jack dropped to his knees beside her, a shard from the