'I hope so,' he said.

'Well, good luck.' Gendron tipped his cap to Barbie before putting it back on. 'I hope to shake your hand before the day's out.'

'Me, too,' Barbie said. He paused. He had been thinking. 'Can you do something for me, if you can get to your cell phone?'

'Sure.'

'Call the Army base at Fort Benning. Ask for the liaison officer and tell them you need to get in touch with Colonel James O. Cox. Tell them it's urgent, that you're calling for Captain Dak Barbara. Can you remember that?'

'Dale Barbara. That's you. James Cox, that's him. Got it.'

'If you reach him… I'm not sure you will, but if… tell him what's going on here. Tell him if no one's gotten in touch with Homeland Security, he's the man. Can you do that?'

Gendron nodded. 'If I can, I will. Good luck, soldier.'

Barbie could have done without ever having been called that again, but he touched a finger to his forehead. Then he went on, ^looking for what he no longer thought he would find.

He found a woods road that roughly paralleled the barrier. It was overgrown and disused, but much better than pushing through the puckerbrush. Every now and then he diverted to the west, feeling for the wall between Chester's Mill and the outside world. It was always there.

When Barbie came to where 119 crossed into The Mill's sister town of Tarker's Mills, he stopped. The driver of the overturned delivery truck had been taken away by some good Samaritan on the other side of the barrier, but the truck itself lay blocking the road like a big dead animal. The back doors had sprung open on impact. The tar was littered with Devil Dogs, Ho Hos, Ring Dings, Twinkies, and peanut butter crackers. A young man in a George Strait tee-shirt sat on a stump, eating one of the latter. He had a cell phone in hand. He looked up at Barbie. 'Yo. Did you come from…' He pointed vaguely behind Barbie. He looked tired and scared and disillusioned.

'From the other side of town,' Barbie said. 'Right.'

'Invisible wall the whole way? Border closed?'

'Yes.'

The young man nodded and hit a button on his cell. 'Dusty? You there yet?' He listened some more, then said: 'Okay.' He ended the call. 'My friend Dusty and I started east of here. Split up. He went south. We've been staying in touch by phone. When we can get through, that is. He's where the copter crashed now. Says it's getting crowded there.'

Barbie bet it was. 'No break in this thing anywhere on your side?'

The young man shook his head. He didn't say more, and didn't need to.They could have missed breaks, Barbie knew that was possible—holes the size of windows or doors—but he doubted it.

He thought they were cut off.

WE ALL SUPPORT THE TEAM

1

Barbie walked back down Route 119 into the center of town, a distance of about three miles. By the time he got there, it was six o'clock. Main Street was almost deserted, but alive with the roar of generators; dozens of them, by the sound. The traffic light at the intersection of 119 and 117 was dark, but Sweetbriar Rose was lit and loaded. Looking through the big front window, Barbie siw that every table was taken. But when he walked in the door, he heard none of the usual big talk: politics, the Red Sox, the local economy, the Patriots, newly acquired cars and pickemups, the Celtics, the price of gas, the Bruins, newly acquired power tools, the Twin Mills Wildcats. None of the usual laughter, either.

There was a TV over the counter, and everyone was watching it. Barbie observed, with that sense of disbelief and dislocation everyone who actually finds him or herself at the site of a major disaster must feel, that CNN's Anderson Cooper was standing out on Route 119 with the still-smoldering hulk of the wrecked pulp-truck in the background.

Rose herself was waiting table, occasionally darting back to the counter to take an order. Wispy locks of hair were escaping her net and hanging around her face. She looked tired and harried. The counter was supposed to be Angie McCain's territory from four until closing, but Barbie saw no sign of her tonight. Perhaps she'd been out of town when the barrier slammed down. If that were the case, she might not be back behind the counter for a good long while.

Anson Wheeler—whom Rosie usually just called 'tie kid,' although the guy had to be at least twenty-five—was cooking, and Barbie dreaded to think what Anse might do to anything more complicated than beans and franks, the traditional Saturday-night special at Sweetbriar Rose. Woe to the fellow or gal who ordered breaktast-for-dinner and had to face Anson's nuclear fried eggs. Still, it was good he was here, because in addition to the missing Angi;, there was also no sign of Dodee Sanders. Although that particular drip didn't need a disaster to keep her away from work. She wasn't lazy, exactly, but she was easily distracted. And when it came tc brainpower…jeez, what could you say? Her father—Andy Sanders, The "Mill's First Selectman—would never be a Mensa candidate, but Dodee "Xhim look like Albert Einstein.

On the TV, helicopters were landing behind Anderson Cooper, blowing his groovy white hair around and nearly drowning his voice. The copters looked like Pave Lows. Barbie had ridden in his share during his time in Iraq. Now an Army officer walked into the picture, covered Cooper's mike with one gloved hand, and spoke in the reporter's ear.

The assembled diners in Sweetbriar Rose murmured among themselves. Barbie understood their disquiet. He felt it himself. When a man in a uniform covered a famous TV reporter's mike without so much as a by-your-leave, it was surely the End of Days.

The Army guy—a Colonel but not his Colonel, seeing Cox would have completed Barbie's sense of mental dislocation—finished what he had to say. His glove made a windy whroop sound when he took it off the mike. He walked out of the shot, his face a stolid blank. Barbie recognized the look: Army pod-person.

Cooper was saying, 'The press is being told we have to fall back half a mile, to a place called Raymond's Roadside Store.'The patrons murmured again at this. They all knew Raymond's Roadside in Motton, where the sign in the window said COLD BEER HOT SANDWICHES FRESH BAIT. 'This area, less than a hundred yards from what we're calling the barrier—for want of a better term—has been declared a national security site. We'll resume our coverage as soon as we can, but right now I'm sending it back to you in Washington, Wolf.'

The headline on the red band beneath the location shot read BREAKING NEWS MAINE TOWN CUT OFF MYSTERY DEEPENS. And in the upper righthand corner, in red, the word SEVERE was blinking like a neon tavern sign. Drink Severe Beer, Barbie thought, and nearly chuckled.