'Yes,' Barbie said. 'But it's gone now. You?'

'Gone,' Sea Dogs agreed.

Their outstretched hands did not quite meet, and Barbie again thought of a pane of glass; putting your inside hand up against the hand of some outside friend, the fingers together but not touching.

He pulled his hand back. It was the one he'd used to wipe his bloody nose, and he saw the red shapes of his own fingers hanging on thin air. As he watched, the blood began to bead. Just as it would on glass.

'Holy God, what does it mean?' Sea Dogs whispered.

Barbie had no answer. Before he could say anything, Ernie Calvert tapped him on the back. 'I called the cops,' he said. 'They're coming, but no one answers at the Fire Department — I got a recording telling me to call Castle Rock.'

'Okay, do that,' Barbie said. Then another bird dropped about twenty feet away, falling into the farmer's grazeland and disappearing. Seeing it brought a new idea into Barbie's mind, possibly sparked by the time he'd spent toting a gun on the other side of the world. 'But first, I think you better call the Air National Guard, up in Bangor.'

Ernie gaped at him. 'The Guard?'

'They're the only ones who can institute a no-fly zone over Chester's Mill,' Barbie said. 'And I think they better do it right away.'

LOTTA DEAD BIRDS

1

The Mill's Chief of Police heard neither explosion, though he was outside, raking leaves on the lawn of his Morin Street home. The portable radio was sitting on the hood of his wife's Honda, playing sacred music on WOK (call letters standing for Christ Is King and known by the town's younger denizens as Jesus Radio). Also, his hearing wasn't what it once had been. At sixty-seven, was anybody's?

But he heard the first siren when it cut through the day; his ears were attuned to that sound just as a mother's are to the cries of her children.