Under the Dome: A Novel (100 page)

“Fine by me,” Roger Killian said. “I hate all them gears.” He gave Chef and Andy a final look rich with mistrust, then started back to the second truck.

“God bless you fellas,” Andy called.

Stewart threw a sour dart of a glance back over his shoulder. “God bless you, too. Because God knows you’re gonna need it.”

The new proprietors of the largest meth lab in North America stood side by side, watching the big orange truck back down the road, make a clumsy
K
-turn, and drive away.

“Sanders!”

“Yes, Chef?”

“I want to pep up the music, and immediately. This town needs some Mavis Staples. Also some Clark Sisters. Once I get that shit cued up, let’s smoke.”

Andy’s eyes filled with tears. He put his arm around the former Phil Bushey’s bony shoulders and hugged. “I love you, Chef.”

“Thanks, Sanders. Right back atcha. Just keep your gun loaded. From now on we’ll have to stand watches.”

15

Big Jim was sitting at his son’s bedside as approaching sunset turned the day orange. Douglas Twitchell had come in to give Junior a shot. Now the boy was deeply asleep. In some ways, Big Jim knew, it would be better if Junior died; alive and with a tumor pressing down on his brain, there was no telling what he might do or say. Of course the kid was his own flesh and blood, but there was the greater good to think about; the good of the town. One of the extra pillows in the closet would probably do it—

That was when his phone rang. He looked at the name in the window and frowned. Something had gone wrong. Stewart would hardly be calling so soon if it were otherwise. “What.”

He listened with growing astonishment.
Andy
out there? Andy with a
gun
?

Stewart was waiting for him to answer. Waiting to be told what to do.
Get in line, pal,
Big Jim thought, and sighed. “Give me a minute. I need to think. I’ll call you back.”

He ended the call and considered this new problem. He could take a bunch of cops out there tonight. In some ways it was an attractive idea: whip them up at Food City, then lead the raid himself. If Andy died, so much the better. That would make James Rennie, Senior, the entire town government.

On the other hand, the special town meeting was tomorrow night. Everyone would come, and there would be questions. He was sure he could lay the meth lab off on Barbara and the Friends of Barbara (in Big Jim’s mind, Andy Sanders had now become an official Friend of Barbara), but still … no.

No.

He wanted his flock scared, but not in an outright panic. Panic wouldn’t serve his purpose, which was to establish complete control of the town. And if he let Andy and Bushey stay where they were for a little while, what harm? It might even do some good. They’d grow
complacent. They might fancy themselves forgotten, because drugs were full of Vitamin Stupid.

Friday, on the other hand—the day after tomorrow—was that cotton-picker Cox’s designated Visitors Day. Everybody would stream out to the Dinsmore farm again. Burpee would no doubt set up another hotdog stand. While that clustermug was going on, and while Cox was conducting his one-man press conference, Big Jim himself could lead a force of sixteen or eighteen police up to the radio station and wipe those two troublesome stoners out.

Yes. That was the answer.

He called Stewart back and told him to leave well enough alone.

“But I thought you wanted the propane,” Stewart said.

“We’ll get it,” Big Jim said. “And you can help us take care of those two, if you want to.”

“You’re damn right I want to. That sonofabitch—sorry, Big Jim—that sonofabuck Bushey needs a payback.”

“He’ll get it. Friday afternoon. Clear your schedule.”

Big Jim felt fine again, heart beating slowly and steadily in his chest, nary a stutter or flutter. And that was good, because there was so much to do, starting with tonight’s police pep talk at Food City: just the right environment in which to impress the importance of order on a bunch of new cops. Really, there was nothing like a scene of destruction to get people playing follow-the-leader.

He started out of the room, then went back and kissed his sleeping son’s cheek. Getting rid of Junior might become necessary, but for the time being, that too could wait.

16

Another night is falling on the little town of Chester’s Mill; another night under the Dome. But there is no rest for us; we have two meetings to attend, and we also ought to check up on Horace the Corgi before we sleep. Horace is keeping Andrea Grinnell company
tonight, and although he is for the moment biding his time, he has not forgotten the popcorn between the couch and the wall.

So let us go then, you and I, while the evening spreads out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table. Let us go while the first discolored stars begin to show overhead. This is the only town in a four-state area where they’re out tonight. Rain has overspread northern New England, and cable-news viewers will soon be treated to some remarkable satellite photographs showing a hole in the clouds that exactly mimics the sock-shape of Chester’s Mill. Here the stars shine down, but now they’re dirty stars because the Dome is dirty.

Heavy showers fall in Tarker’s Mills and the part of Castle Rock known as The View; CNN’s meteorologist, Reynolds Wolf (no relation to Rose Twitchell’s Wolfie), says that while no one can as yet be
entirely
sure, it seems likely that the west-to-east airflow is pushing the clouds against the western side of the Dome and squeezing them like sponges before they can slide away to the north and south. He calls it “a fascinating phenomenon.”

Suzanne Malveaux, the anchor, asks him what the long-term weather under the Dome might be like, if the crisis continues.

“Suzanne,” Reynolds Wolf says, “that’s a great question. All we know for sure is that Chester’s Mill isn’t getting any rain tonight, although the surface of the Dome is permeable enough so that some moisture may be seeping through where the showers are heaviest. NOAA meteorologists tell me the long-term prospects of precip under the Dome aren’t good. And we know their principal waterway, Prestile Stream, has pretty much dried up.” He smiles, showing a great set of TV teeth. “Thank God for artesian wells!”

“You bet, Reynolds,” Suzanne says, and then the Geico gekko appears on the TV screens of America.

That’s enough cable news; let us float through certain half-deserted streets, past the Congo church and the parsonage (the meeting there hasn’t started yet, but Piper has loaded up the big coffee urn, and Julia is making sandwiches by the light of a hissing
Coleman lamp), past the McCain house surrounded by its sad sag of yellow police tape, down Town Common Hill and past the Town Hall, where janitor Al Timmons and a couple of his friends are cleaning and sprucing up for the special town meeting tomorrow night, past War Memorial Plaza, where the statue of Lucien Calvert (Norrie’s great-grandfather; I probably don’t have to tell you that) keeps his long watch.

We’ll stop for a quick check on Barbie and Rusty, shall we? There’ll be no problem getting downstairs; there are only three cops in the ready room, and Stacey Moggin, who’s on the desk, is sleeping with her head pillowed on her forearm. The rest of the PD is at Food City, listening to Big Jim’s latest stemwinder, but it wouldn’t matter if they were all here, because we are invisible. They would feel no more than a faint draft as we glide past them.

There’s not much to see in the Coop, because hope is as invisible as we are. The two men have nothing to do but wait until tomorrow night, and hope that things break their way. Rusty’s hand hurts, but the pain isn’t as bad as he thought it might be, and the swelling isn’t as bad as he feared. Also, Stacey Moggin, God bless her heart, snuck him a couple of Excedrin around five PM.

For the time being, these two men—our heroes, I suppose—are sitting on their bunks and playing Twenty Questions. It’s Rusty’s turn to guess.

“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” he asks.

“None of them,” Barbie replies.

“How can it be none of them? It
has
to be one.”

“It’s not,” Barbie says. He is thinking of Poppa Smurf.

“You’re jacking me up.”

“I’m not.”

“You
have
to be.”

“Quit bitching and start asking.”

“Can I have a hint?”

“No. That’s your first no. Nineteen to go.”

“Wait a goddam minute. That’s not fair.”

We’ll leave them to shift the weight of the next twenty-four
hours as best they can, shall we? Let us make our way past the still-simmering heap of ashes that used to be the
Democrat
(alas, no longer serving “The Little Town That Looks Like A Boot”), past Sanders Hometown Drug (scorched but still standing, although Andy Sanders will never pass through its doors again), past the bookstore and LeClerc’s Maison des Fleurs, where all the fleurs are now dead or dying. Let us pass under the dead stoplight marking the intersection of Routes 119 and 117 (we brush it; it sways slightly, then stills again), and cross the Food City parking lot. We are as silent as a child’s sleeping breath.

The supermarket’s big front windows have been covered with plywood requisitioned from Tabby Morrell’s lumberyard, and the worst of the gluck on the floor has been mopped up by Jack Cale and Ernie Calvert, but Food City is still a godawful mess, with boxes and dry goods strewn from hell to breakfast. The remaining merchandise (what hasn’t been carted away to various town pantries or stored in the motor pool behind the PD, in other words) is scattered helterskelter on the shelves. The soft-drink cooler, beer cooler, and ice cream freezer are busted in. There’s the high stink of spilled wine. This leftover chaos is exactly what Big Jim Rennie wants his new—and awfully young, for the most part—cadre of enforcement officers to see. He wants them to realize the whole town could look like this, and he’s canny enough to know he doesn’t need to say it right out loud. They will get the point: this is what happens when the shepherd fails in his duty and the flock stampedes.

Do we need to listen to his speech? Nah. We’ll be listening to Big Jim tomorrow night, and that should be enough. Besides, we all know how this one goes; America’s two great specialties are demagogues and rock and roll, and we’ve all heard plenty of both in our time.

Yet we should examine the faces of his listeners before we go. Notice how rapt they are, and then remind yourself that many of these (Carter Thibodeau, Mickey Wardlaw, and Todd Wendlestat, to name just three) are chumps who couldn’t get through a single week of school without scoring detention for causing trouble in class or fighting in the bathrooms. But Rennie has them hypnotized.

He’s never been much of a shake one-on-one, but when he’s in front of a crowd … rowdy-dow and a hot-cha-cha, as old Clayton Brassey used to say back in the days when he still had a few working brain cells. Big Jim’s telling them “thin blue line” and “the pride of standing with your fellow officers” and “the town is depending on you.” Other stuff, too. The good stuff that never loses its charm.

Big Jim switches to Barbie. He tells them that Barbie’s friends are still out there, sowing discord and fomenting dissension for their own evil purposes. Lowering his voice, he says: “They’ll try to discredit me. The lies they’ll tell have no bottom.”

A growl of displeasure greets this.

“Will you listen to the lies? Will you let them discredit me? Will you allow this town to go without a strong leader in its time of greatest need?”

The answer, of course, is a resounding
NO!
And although Big Jim continues (like most politicians, he believes in not just gilding the lily but spray-painting it), we can leave him now.

Let’s head up these deserted streets to the Congo parsonage. And look! Here’s someone we can walk with: a thirteen-year-old girl dressed in faded jeans and an old-school Winged Ripper skate-board tee. The tough riot grrrl pout that is her mother’s despair is gone from Norrie Calvert’s face this evening. It has been replaced by an expression of wonder that makes her look like the eight-year-old she not so long ago was. We follow her gaze and see a vast full moon climbing from the clouds to the east of town. It is the color and shape of a freshly cut pink grapefruit.

“Oh … my …
God,
” Norrie whispers. One fisted hand is pressed between the scant nubs of her breasts as she looks at that pink freak of a moon. Then she walks on, not so amazed that she fails to look around herself from time to time to make sure she’s not being noticed. This is as per Linda Everett’s order: they were to go alone, they were to be unobtrusive, and they were to make absolutely sure they weren’t followed.

“This isn’t a game,” Linda told them. Norrie was more impressed by her pale, strained face than by her words. “If we get caught, they
won’t just take away hit points or make us miss a turn. Do you kids understand that?”

“Can I go with Joe?” Mrs. McClatchey asked. She was almost as pale as Mrs. Everett.

Mrs. Everett shook her head. “Bad idea.” And that had impressed Norrie most of all. No, not a game; maybe life and death.

Ah, but there is the church, and the parsonage tucked in right beside it. Norrie can see the bright white light of Coleman lanterns around back, where the kitchen must be. Soon she’ll be inside, out from under the gaze of that awful pink moon. Soon she’ll be safe.

So she’s thinking when a shadow detaches itself from one of the thicker shadows and takes her by the arm.

17

Norrie was too startled to scream, which was just as well; when the pink moon lit the face of the man who had accosted her, she saw it was Romeo Burpee.

“You scared the
crap
out of me,” she whispered.

“Sorry. Just keepin an eye out, me.” Rommie let go of her arm, and looked around. “Where are your boyfriens?”

Norrie smiled at that. “Dunno. We were supposed to come by ourselves, and different ways. That’s what Mrs. Everett said.” She looked down the hill. “I think that’s Joey’s mom coming now. We should go in.”

They walked toward the light of the lanterns. The parsonage’s inner door was standing open. Rommie knocked softly on the side of the screen and said, “Rommie Burpee and a friend. If there’s a password, we didn’t get it.”