Under the Dome: A Novel (42 page)

Julia was surveying Barbie, all traces of her smile gone. “You had an enemy,” she said. “Now you have a blood-foe.”

“I think you do, too.”

She nodded. “For both our sakes, I hope this missile thing works.”

The second lieutenant said, “Colonel Barbara, we’re leaving. I’d feel much more comfortable if I saw you three doing the same.”

Barbie nodded and for the first time in years snapped off a salute.

18

A B-52 which had taken off from Carswell Air Force Base in the early hours of that Monday morning had been on-station above Burlington, Vermont, since 1040 hours (the Air Force believes in showing up early for the prom whenever possible). The mission was code-named GRAND ISLE. The pilot-commander was Major Gene Ray, who had served in both the Gulf and Iraq wars (in private conversations he referred to the latter as “Big Dubya’s fuck-a-monkey show”). He had two Fasthawk Cruise missiles in his bomb bay. It was a good stick, the Fasthawk, more reliable and powerful than the old Tomahawk, but it felt very weird to be planning to shoot a live one at an American target.

At 1253, a red light on his control panel turned amber. The COMCOM took control of the plane from Major Ray and began to turn it into position. Below him, Burlington disappeared under the wings.

Ray spoke into his headset. “It’s just about show-time, sir.”

In Washington, Colonel Cox said: “Roger that, Major. Good luck. Blast the bastard.”

“It’ll happen,” Ray said.

At 1254, the amber light began to pulse. At 1254:55, it turned green. Ray flicked the switch marked 1. There was no sensation and only a faint
whoosh
from below, but he saw the Fasthawk begin its
flight on vid. It quickly accelerated to its maximum speed, leaving a jet contrail like a fingernail scratch across the sky.

Gene Ray crossed himself, finishing with a kiss at the base of his thumb. “Go with God, my son,” he said.

The Fasthawk’s maximum speed was thirty-five hundred miles an hour. Fifty miles from its target—about thirty miles west of Conway, New Hampshire, and now on the east side of the White Mountains—its computer first calculated and then authorized final approach. The missile’s speed dropped from thirty-five hundred miles an hour to eighteen hundred and fifty as it descended. It locked on Route 302, which is North Conway’s Main Street. Pedestrians looked up uneasily as the Fasthawk passed overhead.

“Isn’t that jet way too low?” a woman in the parking lot of Settlers Green Outlet Village asked her shopping companion, shading her eyes. If the Fasthawk’s guidance system could have talked, it might have said, “You ain’t seen nothin yet, sweetheart.”

It passed over the Maine–New Hampshire border at three thousand feet, trailing a sonic boom that rattled teeth and broke windows. When the guidance system picked up Route 119, it slipped first to a thousand feet, then down to five hundred. By now the computer was in high gear, sampling the guidance system’s data and making a thousand course corrections a minute.

In Washington, Colonel James O. Cox said, “Final approach, people. Hang onto your false teeth.”

The Fasthawk found Little Bitch Road and dropped almost to ground-level, still blasting at near–Mach 2 speed, reading every hill and turn, its tail burning too brightly to look at, leaving a toxic stench of propellant in its wake. It tore leaves from the trees, even ignited some. It imploded a roadside stand in Tarker’s Hollow, sending boards and smashed pumpkins flying into the sky. The boom followed, causing people to fall to the floor with their hands over their heads.

This is going to work,
Cox thought.
How can it not?

19

In Dipper’s, there were now eight hundred people crammed together. No one spoke, although Lissa Jamieson’s lips moved soundlessly as she prayed to whatever New Age oversoul happened to be currently claiming her attention. She clutched a crystal in one hand; the Reverend Piper Libby was holding her mother’s cross against her lips.

Ernie Calvert said, “Here it comes.”

“Where?” Marty Arsenault demanded. “I don’t see noth—”

“Listen!”
Brenda Perkins said.

They heard it come: a growing otherworldly hum from the western edge of town, a
mmmm
that rose to
MMMMMM
in a space of seconds. On the big-screen TV they saw almost nothing, until half an hour later, long after the missile had failed. For those still remaining in the roadhouse, Benny Drake was able to slow the recording down until it was advancing frame by frame. They saw the missile come slewing around what was known as Little Bitch Bend. It was no more than four feet off the ground, almost kissing its own blurred shadow. In the next frame the Fasthawk, tipped with a blast-fragmentation warhead designed to explode on contact, was frozen in midair about where the Marines’ bivouac had been.

In the next frames, the screen filled with a white so bright it made the watchers shade their eyes. Then, as the white began to fade, they saw the missile fragments—so many black dashes against the diminishing blast—and a huge scorch mark where the red
X
had been. The missile had hit its spot exactly.

After that, the people in Dipper’s watched the woods on the Tarker’s side of the Dome burst into flame. They watched the asphalt on that side first buckle and then begin to melt.

20

“Fire the other one,” Cox said dully, and Gene Ray did. It broke more windows and scared more people in eastern New Hampshire and western Maine.

Otherwise, the result was the same.

1

At 19 Mill Street, home of the McClatchey family, there was a moment of silence when the recording ended. Then Norrie Calvert burst into fresh tears. Benny Drake and Joe McClatchey, after looking at each other over her bowed head with identical
What do I do now
expressions, put their arms around her quaking shoulders and gripped each other’s wrists in a kind of soul shake.

“That’s
it
?” Claire McClatchey asked unbelievingly. Joe’s mother wasn’t crying, but she was close; her eyes glistened. She was holding her husband’s picture in her hands, had taken it off the wall shortly after Joe and his friends had come in with the DVD. “That’s
all
?”

No one answered. Barbie was perched on the arm of the easy chair where Julia was sitting.
I could be in big trouble here,
he thought. But it wasn’t his
first
thought; that had been that the town was in big trouble.

Mrs. McClatchey got to her feet. She still held her husband’s picture. Sam had gone to the flea market that ran at Oxford Speedway each Saturday until the weather got too cold. His hobby was refinishing furniture, and he often found good stuff at the stalls there. Three days later he was still in Oxford, sharing space at the Raceway Motel with several platoons of reporters and TV people; he and Claire couldn’t speak to each other on the phone, but had been able to stay in touch by e-mail. So far.

“What happened to your computer, Joey?” she asked. “Did it blow up?”

Joe, his arm still around Norrie’s shoulders, his hand still gripping Benny’s wrist, shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “It probably just melted.” He turned to Barbie. “The heat might set the woods on fire out there. Someone ought to do something about that.”

“I don’t think there are any fire engines in town,” Benny said. “Well, maybe one or two old ones.”

“Let me see what I can do about that,” Julia said. Claire McClatchey towered over her; it was easy enough to see where Joe had gotten his height. “Barbie, it would probably be best if I handled this on my own.”

“Why?” Claire looked bewildered. One of her tears finally over-spilled and ran down her cheek. “Joe said the government put you in charge, Mr. Barbara—the President himself!”

“I had a disagreement with Mr. Rennie and Chief Randolph about the video feed,” Barbie said. “It got a little hot. I doubt if either of them would welcome my advice just now. Julia, I don’t think they’d exactly welcome yours, either. At least not yet. If Randolph’s halfway competent, he’ll send a bunch of deputies out there with whatever’s left in the firebarn. At the very least, there’ll be hoses and Indian pumps.”

Julia considered this, then said: “Would you step outside with me for a minute, Barbie?”

He looked at Joe’s mother, but Claire was no longer paying them any attention. She had moved her son aside and was sitting next to Norrie, who pressed her face against Claire’s shoulder.

“Dude, the government owes me a computer,” Joe said as Barbie and Julia walked toward the front door.

“Noted,” Barbie said. “And thank you, Joe. You did well.”

“A lot better than their damn missile,” Benny muttered.

On the front stoop of the McClatchey home, Barbie and Julia stood silent, looking toward the town common, Prestile Stream, and the Peace Bridge. Then, in a voice that was low-pitched and angry, Julia said: “He’s not. That’s the thing. That’s the goddam thing.”

“Who’s not what?”

“Peter Randolph is not halfway competent. Not even one-quarter.

I went to school with him all the way from kindergarten, where he was a world-champion pants-wetter, to twelfth grade, where he was part of the Bra-Snapping Brigade. He was a C-minus intellect who got B-minus grades because his father was on the school board, and his brainpower has not increased. Our Mr. Rennie has surrounded himself with dullards. Andrea Grinnell is an exception, but she’s also a drug addict. OxyContin.”

“Back problems,” Barbie said. “Rose told me.”

Enough of the trees on the common had shed their leaves for Barbie and Julia to be able to see Main Street. It was deserted now—most people would still be at Dipper’s, discussing what they had seen—but its sidewalks would soon fill with stunned, disbelieving townsfolk drifting back to their homes. Men and women who would not yet even dare ask each other what came next.

Julia sighed and ran her hands through her hair. “Jim Rennie thinks if he just keeps all the control in his own hands, things will eventually come rightside up. For him and his friends, at least. He’s the worst kind of politician—selfish, too egocentric to realize he’s way out of his league, and a coward underneath that bluff cando exterior of his. When things get bad enough, he’ll send this town to the devil if he thinks he can save himself by doing so. A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men. You’re the one who should be running this show.”

“I appreciate your confidence—”

“But that’s not going to happen no matter what your Colonel Cox and the President of the United States may want. It’s not going to happen even if fifty thousand people march down Fifth Avenue in New York, waving signs with your face on them. Not with that fucking Dome still over our heads.”

“Every time I listen to you, you sound less Republican,” Barbie remarked.

She struck him on the bicep with a surprisingly hard fist. “This is not a joke.”

“No,” Barbie said. “It’s not a joke. It’s time to call for elections. And I urge you to stand for Second Selectman yourself.”

She looked at him pityingly. “Do you think Jim Rennie is going to allow elections as long as the Dome is in place? What world are you living in, my friend?”

“Don’t underestimate the will of the town, Julia.”

“And don’t
you
underestimate James Rennie. He’s been in charge here for donkey’s years and people have come to accept him. Also, he’s very talented when it comes to finding scapegoats. An out-oftowner—a drifter, in fact—would be perfect in the current situation. Do we know anybody like that?”

“I was expecting an idea from you, not a political analysis.”

For a moment he thought she was going to hit him again. Then she drew in a breath, let it out, and smiled. “You come on all awshucks, but you’ve got some thorns, don’t you?”

The Town Hall whistle began to blow a series of short blasts into the warm, still air.

“Someone’s called in a fire,” Julia said. “I think we know where.”

They looked west, where rising smoke smudged the blue. Barbie thought most of it had to be coming from the Tarker’s Mills side of the Dome, but the heat would almost certainly have ignited small fires on the Chester side as well.

“You want an idea? Okay, here’s one. I’ll track down Brenda—she’ll either be at home or at Dipper’s with everyone else—and suggest she take charge of the fire-fighting operation.”

“And if she says no?”

“I’m pretty sure she won’t. At least there’s no wind to speak of—not on this side of the Dome—so it’s probably just grass and brush. She’ll tap some guys to pitch in, and she’ll know the right ones. They’ll be the ones Howie would’ve picked.”

“None of them the new officers, I take it.”

“I’ll leave that up to her, but I doubt if she’ll be calling on Carter Thibodeau or Melvin Searles. Freddy Denton, either. He’s been on the cops for five years, but I know from Brenda that Duke was planning to let him go. Freddy plays Santa every year at the elementary school, and the kids love him—he’s got a great ho-ho-ho. He’s also got a mean streak.”

“You’ll be going around Rennie again.”

“Yes.”

“Payback could be a bitch.”

“I can be a bitch myself, when I have to be. Brenda too, if she gets her back up.”

“Go for it. And make sure she asks that guy Burpee. When it comes to putting out a brushfire, I’d trust him rather than any town firebarn leftovers. He’s got everything in that store of his.”

She nodded. “That’s a damned good idea.”

“Sure you don’t want me to tag along?”

“You’ve got other fish to fry. Did Bren give you Duke’s key to the fallout shelter?”

“She did.”

“Then the fire may be just the distraction you need. Get that Geiger counter.” She started for her Prius, then stopped and turned back. “Finding the generator—assuming there is one—is probably the best chance this town has got. Maybe the only one. And Barbie?”

“Right here, ma’am,” he said, smiling a little.

She didn’t. “Until you’ve heard Big Jim Rennie’s stump speech, don’t sell him short. There are reasons he’s lasted as long as he has.”