Under the Dome: A Novel (70 page)

Julia, who had just been considering whom to interview first, had no intention of letting these two slip away. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll walk on opposite sides of the street until we’re past the police station, shall we?”

At this, Linda managed a smile. “What a good idea,” she said.

2

Piper Libby lowered herself carefully in front of the altar of the First Congo Church, wincing even though she had put down a pew-pad for her bruised and swollen knees. She braced herself with her right hand, holding her recently dislocated left arm against her side. It seemed okay—less painful than her knees, in fact—but she had no intention of testing it unnecessarily. It would be all too easy to get
it out of joint again; she had been informed of that (
sternly
) after her soccer injury in high school. She folded her hands and closed her eyes. Immediately her tongue went to the hole where there had been a tooth up until yesterday. But there was a worse hole in her life.

“Hello, Not-There,” she said. “It’s me again, back for another helping of Your love and mercy.” A tear trickled from beneath one swollen eyelid and ran down one swollen (not to mention colorful) cheek. “Is my dog anywhere around? I only ask because I miss him so much. If he is, I hope you’ll give him the spiritual equivalent of a chewbone. He deserves one.”

More tears now, slow and hot and stinging.

“Probably he’s not. Most major religions agree that dogs don’t go to heaven, although certain offshoot sects—and
The Reader’s Digest,
I believe—disagree.”

Of course if there
was
no heaven, the question was moot, and the idea of this heavenless existence, this heavenless
cosmology,
was where what remained of her faith seemed more and more at home. Maybe oblivion; maybe something worse. A vast trackless plain under a white sky, say—a place where none was always the hour, nowhere the destination, and nobody your companions. Just a big old Not-There, in other words: for bad cops, lady preachers, kids who accidentally shot themselves, and galoot German shepherds who died trying to protect their mistresses. No Being to sort the wheat from the chaff. There was something histrionic about praying to such a concept (if not downright blasphemous), but occasionally it helped.

“But heaven’s not the point,” she resumed. “The point right now is trying to figure out how much of what happened to Clover was my fault. I know I have to own some of it—my temper got the best of me. Again. My religious teaching suggests You put that short fuse in me to begin with, and it’s my job to deal with it, but I hate that idea. I don’t completely reject it, but I hate it. It makes me think of how, when you take your car to get repaired, the guys in the shop always find a way to blame the problem on you. You ran it too much, you didn’t run it enough, you forgot to release the handbrake, you forgot to close your windows and the rain got in the wiring. And
you know what’s worse? If You’re Not-There, I can’t shove even a little of the blame off on You. What does that leave? Fucking genetics?”

She sighed.

“Sorry about the profanity; why don’t You just pretend it Wasn’t-There? That’s what my mother always used to do. In the meantime, I have another question: What do I do now? This town is in terrible trouble, and I’d like to do something to help, only I can’t decide what. I feel foolish and weak and confused. I suppose if I was one of those Old Testament eremites, I’d say I need a sign. At this point, even YIELD or REDUCE SPEED IN SCHOOL ZONE would look good.”

The moment she finished saying this, the outside door opened, then boomed shut. Piper looked over her shoulder, half-expecting to see an angel, complete with wings and blazing white robe.
If he wants to wrestle, he’ll have to heal my arm first,
she thought.

It wasn’t an angel; it was Rommie Burpee. Half his shirt was untucked, hanging down his leg almost to mid-thigh, and he looked almost as downcast as she felt. He started down the center aisle, then saw her and stopped, as surprised to see Piper as she was him.

“Oh, gee,” he said, only with his Lewiston
on parle
accent, it came out
Oh, shee.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you was dere. I’ll come back later.”

“No,” she said, and struggled to her feet, once more using just her right arm. “I’m done, anyway.”

“I’m actually a Cat’lick,” he said (
No shit,
Piper thought), “but there isn’t a Cat’lick church in The Mill … which acourse you know, bein a minister … and you know what they say bout any port in a storm. I thought I’d come in and say a little prayer for Brenda. I always liked dat woman.” He rubbed a hand up one cheek. The rasp of his palm on the beard-stubble there seemed very loud in the hollow silence of the church. His Elvis ‘do was drooping around his ears. “Loved her, really. I never said, but I t’ink she knew.”

Piper stared at him with growing horror. She hadn’t been out of the parsonage all day, and although she knew about what had happened
at Food City—several of her parishioners had called her—she had heard nothing about Brenda Perkins.

“Brenda? What happened to her?”

“Murdered. Others, too. They’re sayin that guy Barbie did it. He been arrested.”

Piper clapped a hand over her mouth and swayed on her feet. Rommie hurried forward and put a steadying arm around her waist. And that was how they were standing before the altar, almost like a man and woman about to be married, when the vestibule door opened again and Jackie led Linda and Julia inside.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good place, after all,” Jackie said.

The church was a soundbox, and although she didn’t speak loudly, Piper and Romeo Burpee heard her perfectly.

“Don’t leave,” Piper said. “Not if it’s about what happened. I can’t believe Mr. Barbara … I would have said he was incapable. He put my arm back in after it was dislocated. He was very gentle about it.” She paused to think about that. “As gentle as he could be, under the circumstances. Come down front. Please come down front.”

“People can fix a dislocated arm and still be capable of murder,” Linda said, but she was biting her lip and twisting her wedding ring.

Jackie put a hand on her wrist. “We were going to keep this quiet, Lin—remember?”

“Too late for that,” Linda said. “They’ve seen us with Julia. If she writes a story and those two say they saw us with her, we’ll get blamed.”

Piper had no clear idea what Linda was talking about, but she got the general gist. She raised her right arm and swept it around. “You’re in my church, Mrs. Everett, and what’s said here stays here.”

“Do you promise?” Linda asked.

“Yes. So why don’t we talk about it? I was just praying for a sign, and here you all are.”

“I don’t believe in stuff like that,” Jackie said.

“Neither do I, actually,” Piper said, and laughed.

“I don’t like it,” Jackie said. It was Julia she was addressing.
“No matter what she says, this is too many people. Losing my job like Marty is one thing. I could deal with that, the pay sucks, anyway. Getting Jim Rennie mad at me, though …” She shook her head. “Not a good idea.”

“It isn’t too many,” Piper said. “It’s just the right number. Mr. Burpee, can you keep a secret?”

Rommie Burpee, who had done any number of questionable deals in his time, nodded and put a finger over his lips. “Mum’s the word,” he said.
Word
came out
woid.

“Let’s go in the parsonage,” Piper said. When she saw that Jackie still looked doubtful, Piper held out her left hand to her … very carefully. “Come, let us reason together. Maybe over a little tot of whiskey?”

And with this, Jackie was at last convinced.

3

31 BURN CLEANSE BURN CLEANSE
THE BEAST WILL BE CAST INTO A
BURNING LAKE OF FIRE (REV 19:20)
“2 BE TORMENTED DAY & NITE 4-EVER” (20:10)
BURN THE WICKED
PURIFY THE SAINTLIE
BURN CLEANSE BURN CLEANSE 31

31 JESUS OF FIRE COMING 31

The three men crammed into the cab of the rumbling Public Works truck looked at this cryptic message with some wonder. It had been painted on the storage building behind the WCIK studios, black on red and in letters so large they covered almost the entire surface.

The man in the middle was Roger Killian, the chicken farmer
with the bullet-headed brood. He turned to Stewart Bowie, who was behind the wheel of the truck. “What’s it mean, Stewie?”

It was Fern Bowie who answered. “It means that goddam Phil Bushey’s crazier than ever, that’s what it means.” He opened the truck’s glove compartment, removed a pair of greasy work gloves, and revealed a.38 revolver. He checked the loads, then snapped the cylinder back into place with a flick of his wrist and jammed the pistol in his belt.

“You know, Fernie,” Stewart said, “that is a goddam good way to blow your babymakers off.”

“Don’t you worry about me, worry about
him,
” Fern said, pointing back at the studio. From it the faint sound of gospel music drifted to them. “He’s been gettin high on his own supply for most of a year now, and he’s about as reliable as nitroglycerine.”

“Phil likes people to call him The Chef now,” Roger Killian said. They had first pulled up outside the studio and Stewart had honked the PW truck’s big horn—not once but several times. Phil Bushey had not come out. He might be in there hiding; he might be wandering in the woods behind the station; it was even possible, Stewart thought, that he was in the lab. Paranoid. Dangerous. Which still didn’t make the gun a good idea. He leaned over, plucked it from Fern’s belt, and tucked it under the driver’s seat.

“Hey!” Fern cried.

“You’re not firing a gun in there,” Stewart said. “You’re apt to blow us all to the moon.” And to Roger, he said: “When’s the last time you saw that scrawny motherfucker?”

Roger mulled it over. “Been four weeks, at least—since the last big shipment out of town. When we had that big Chinook helicopter come in.” He pronounced it
Shinoook.
Rommie Burpee would have understood.

Stewart considered. Not good. If Bushey was in the woods, that was all right. If he was cowering in the studio, paranoid and thinking they were Feds, probably still no problem … unless he decided to come out shooting, that was.

If he was in the storage building, though … that
might
be a problem.

Stewart said to his brother, “There’s some goodsize junks of wood in the back of the truck. Get you one of those. If Phil shows and starts cuttin up rough, clock im one.”

“What if he has a gun?” Roger asked, quite reasonably.

“He won’t,” Stewart said. And although he wasn’t actually sure of this, he had his orders: two tanks of propane, to be delivered to the hospital posthaste.
And we’re going to move the rest of it out of there as soon as we can,
Big Jim had said.
We’re officially out of the meth business.

That was something of a relief; when they were shut of this Dome thing, Stewart intended to get out of the funeral business, too. Move someplace warm, like Jamaica or Barbados. He never wanted to see another dead body. But he didn’t want to be the one who told “Chef” Bushey they were closing down, and he had informed Big Jim of that.

Let me worry about The Chef,
Big Jim had said.

Stewart drove the big orange truck around the building and backed it up to the rear doors. He left the engine idling to run the winch and the hoist.

“Lookit that,” Roger Killian marveled. He was staring into the west, where the sun was going down in a troubling red smear. Soon it would sink below the great black smudge left by the woods-fire and be blotted out in a dirty eclipse. “Don’t that just beat the dickens.”

“Quit gawking,” Stewart said. “I want to do this and get gone. Fernie, get you a junk. Pick out a good one.”

Fern climbed over the hoist and picked out a leftover piece of planking about as long as a baseball bat. He held it in both hands and gave it an experimental swish. “This’ll do,” he said.

“Baskin-Robbins,” Roger said dreamily. He was still shading his eyes and squinting west. The squint was not a good look for him; it made him resemble a fairy-tale troll.

Stewart paused while unlocking the back door, a complicated
process that involved a touchpad and two locks. “What are you pissing about?”

“Thirty-one flavors,” Roger said. He smiled, revealing a rotting set of teeth that had never been visited by Joe Boxer or probably any dentist.

Stewart had no idea what Roger was talking about, but his brother did. “Don’t think that’s an ice cream ad on the side of the buildin,” Fern said. “Unless there’s Baskin-Robbins in the book of Revelations.”

“Shut up, both of you,” Stewart said. “Fernie, stand ready with that junk.” He pushed the door open and peered in. “Phil?”

“Call im Chef,” Roger advised. “Like that nigger cook on
South Park.
That’s what he likes.”

“Chef?” Stewart called. “You in there, Chef?”

No answer. Stewart fumbled into the gloom, half expecting his hand to be seized at any moment, and found the light switch. He turned it on, revealing a room that stretched about three-quarters the length of the storage building. The walls were unfinished bare wood, the spaces between the laths stuffed with pink foam insulation. The room was almost filled with LP gas tanks and canisters of all sizes and brands. He had no idea how many there were in all, but if forced to guess, he would have said between four and six hundred.

Stewart walked slowly up the center aisle, peering at the stenciling on the tanks. Big Jim had told him exactly which ones to take, had said they’d be near the back, and by God, they were. He stopped at the five municipal-size tanks with
CR HOSP
on the side. They were between tanks that had been filched from the post office and some with
MILL MIDDLE SCHOOL
on the sides.

“We’re supposed to take two,” he said to Roger. “Bring the chain and we’ll hook em up. Fernie, go you down there and try that door to the lab. If it ain’t locked, lock it.” He tossed Fern his key ring.

Fern could have done without this chore, but he was an obedient brother. He walked down the aisle between the piles of propane
tanks. They ended ten feet from the door—and the door, he saw with a sinking heart, was standing ajar. Behind him he heard the clank of the chain, then the whine of the winch and the low clatter of the first tank being dragged back to the truck. It sounded far away, especially when he imagined The Chef crouching on the other side of that door, red-eyed and crazy. All smoked up and toting a TEC-9.