Under the Dome: A Novel (94 page)

Now Chef took one of the AKs and laid it across his knees. “That was
not
an airplane,” he amplified.

“No? Then what was it?”

“A sign from God.” Chef looked at what he had painted on the side of the storage barn: two quotes (liberally interpreted) from the Book of Revelation with the number 31 featured prominently. Then he looked back at Andy. To the north, the plume of smoke in the sky was dissipating. Below it, fresh smoke was rising from where the plane had impacted in the woods. “I got the date wrong,” he said in a brooding voice. “Halloween really is coming early this year. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow.”

“Or the day after that,” Andy added helpfully.

“Maybe,” Chef allowed, “but I think it’ll be sooner. Sanders!”

“What, Chef?”

“Take you a gun. You’re in the Lord’s army now. You’re a Christian soldier. Your days of licking that apostate son of a bitch’s ass are over.”

Andy took an AK and laid it across his bare thighs. He liked the weight of it and the warmth of it. He checked to make sure the safety was on. It was. “What apostate son of a bitch are you talking about, Chef?”

Chef fixed him with a look of utter contempt, but when Andy reached for the bong, he handed it over willingly enough. There was plenty for both of them, would be from now until the end, and yea, verily, the end would not be long. “Rennie.
That
apostate son of a bitch.”

“He’s my friend—my pal—but he can be a hardass, all right,” Andy admitted. “My
goodness
but this is good shit.”

“It is,” Chef agreed moodily, and took the bong (which Andy now thought of as the Smokeum Peace Pipe) back. “It’s the longest of long glass, the purest of the pure, and what is it, Sanders?”

“A medicine for melancholy!” Andy returned smartly.

“And what is that?” Pointing at the new black mark on the Dome.

“A sign! From God!”

“Yes,” Chef said, mollified. “That’s exactly what it is. We’re on a God-trip now, Sanders. Do you know what happened when God opened the seventh seal? Have you
read
Revelation?”

Andy had a memory, from the Christian camp he’d attended as a teenager, of angels popping out of that seventh seal like clowns from the little car at the circus, but he didn’t want to say it that way. Chef might consider it blasphemous. So he just shook his head.

“Thought not,” Chef said. “You might have gotten
preaching
at Holy Redeemer, but preaching is not education. Preaching is not the true
visionary shit.
Do you understand that?”

What Andy understood was that he wanted another hit, but he nodded his head.

“When the seventh seal was opened, seven angels appeared with seven trumpets. And each time one blew the boogie, a plague smote down on the earth. Here, toke this shit, it’ll help your concentration.”

How long had they been out here smoking? It seemed like hours. Had they really seen a plane crash? Andy thought so, but now he wasn’t completely sure. It seemed awfully farfetched. Maybe he should take a nap. On the other hand, it was wonderful to the point of ecstasy just to be out here with Chef, getting stoned and educated. “I almost killed myself, but God saved me,” he told Chef. The thought was so wonderful that tears filled his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s obvious. This other stuff isn’t. So listen.”

“I am.”

“First angel blew and hailed down blood on the earth. Second angel blew and a mountain of fire was cast into the sea. That’s your volcanoes and shit.”

“Yes!” Andy shouted, and inadvertently squeezed the trigger of the AK-47 lying across his lap.

“You want to watch that,” Chef said. “If the safety hadn’t been on, you would have blown my tickle-stick into yonder pine tree. Hit
on this shit.” He handed Andy the bong. Andy couldn’t even remember giving it back to him, but he must have done. And what time
was
it? It looked like midafternoon, but how could that be? He hadn’t gotten hungry for lunch and he
always
got hungry for lunch, it was his best meal.

“Now listen, Sanders, because this is the important part.”

Chef was able to quote from memory because he had made quite a study of the book of Revelations since moving out here to the radio station; he read and reread it obsessively, sometimes until dawn streaked the horizon. “ ‘And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven! Burning as if it were a lamp!’ ”

“We just saw that!”

Chef nodded. His eyes were fixed on the black smutch where Air Ireland 179 had met her end. “ ‘And the name of the star is called Wormwood, and many men died because they were made bitter.’ Are
you
bitter, Sanders?”

“No!” Andy assured him.

“No. We’re
mellow.
But now that Star Wormwood has blazed in the sky, bitter men will come. God has told me this, Sanders, and it’s no bullshit. Check me out and you find I’m all about zero bullshit. They’re gonna try to take all this away from us. Rennie and his bull-shit cronies.”

“No way!” Andy cried. A sudden and horribly intense paranoia swept over him. They could be here already! Bullshit cronies creeping through those trees! Bullshit cronies driving down Little Bitch Road in a line of trucks! Now that Chef had brought it up, he even saw why Rennie would want to do it. He’d call it “getting rid of the evidence.”

“Chef!” He gripped his new friend’s shoulder.

“Let up a little, Sanders. That hurts.”

He let up a little. “Big Jim’s already talked about coming up and getting the propane tanks—
that’s the first step
!”

Chef nodded. “They’ve already been here once. Took two tanks. I let em.” He paused, then patted the grenades. “I won’t let em again. Are you down with that?”

Andy thought of the pounds of dope inside the building they
were leaning against, and gave the answer Chef had expected. “My brother,” he said, and embraced Chef.

Chef was hot and stinky, but Andy hugged with enthusiasm. Tears were rolling down his face, which he had neglected to shave on a weekday for the first time in over twenty years. This was great. This was … was …

Bonding!

“My brother,” he sobbed into Chef’s ear.

Chef thrust him back and looked at him solemnly. “We are agents of the Lord,” he said.

And Andy Sanders—now all alone in the world except for the scrawny prophet beside him—said amen.

23

Jackie found Ernie Calvert behind his house, weeding his garden. She was a little worried about approaching him in spite of what she’d told Piper, but she needn’t have been. He gripped her shoulders with hands that were surprisingly strong for such a portly little man. His eyes shone.

“Thank God someone sees what that windbag’s up to!” He dropped his hands. “Sorry. I smudged your blouse.”

“That’s all right.”

“He’s dangerous, Officer Wettington. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And clever. He set up that damned food riot the way a terrorist would plant a bomb.”

“I have no doubt of it.”

“But he’s also stupid. Clever and stupid is a terrible combination. You can persuade people to go with you, you see. All the way to hell. Look at that fellow Jim Jones, remember him?”

“The one who got all his followers to drink poison. So you’ll come to the meeting?”

“You bet. And mum’s the word. Unless you want me to talk to Lissa Jamieson, that is. Glad to do it.”

Before Jackie could answer, her cell phone rang. It was her personal; she had turned in the one issued to her by the PD along with her badge and gun.

“Hello, this is Jackie.”

“
Mihi portatoe vulneratos,
Sergeant Wettington,” an unfamiliar voice said.

The motto of her old unit in Würzburg—
bring us your wounded
—and Jackie responded without even thinking: “On stretchers, crutches, or in bags, we put em together with spit and rags. Who the hell is this?”

“Colonel James Cox, Sergeant.”

Jackie moved the phone away from her mouth. “Give me a minute, Ernie?”

He nodded and went back to his garden. Jackie strolled toward the shakepole fence at the foot of the yard. “What can I do for you, Colonel? And is this line secure?”

“Sergeant, if your man Rennie can tap cell phone calls made from beyond the Dome, we’re in a world of hurt.”

“He’s not my man.”

“Good to know.”

“And I’m no longer in the Army. The Sixty-seventh isn’t even in my rearview mirror these days, sir.”

“Well, that’s not exactly true, Sarge. By order of the President of the United States, you’ve been stop-lossed. Welcome back.”

“Sir, I don’t know whether to say thank you or fuck you very much.”

Cox laughed without much humor. “Jack Reacher says hello.”

“Is that where you got this number?”

“That and a recommendation. A recommendation from Reacher goes a long way. You asked what you can do for me. The answer is twofold, both parts simple. One, get Dale Barbara out of the mess he’s in. Unless you think he’s guilty of the charges?”

“No, sir. I’m sure he’s not. That is to say,
we
are. There are several of us.”

“Good.
Very
good.” There was no mistaking the relief in the man’s voice. “Number two, you can knock that bastard Rennie off his perch.”

“That would be Barbie’s job. If … you’re positive this line’s secure?”

“Positive.”

“If we can get him out.”

“That’s in work, is it?”

“Yes, sir, I believe so.”

“Excellent. How many brownshirts does Rennie have?”

“Currently about thirty, but he’s still hiring. And here in The Mill they’re blueshirts, but I take your meaning. Don’t sell him short, Colonel. He’s got most of this town in his pocket. We’re going to try to get Barbie out, and you better hope we succeed, because I can’t do much about Big Jim on my own. Toppling dictators with no help from the outside world is about six miles above my pay grade. And just FYI, my own days on the Chester’s Mill PD are over. Rennie shitcanned me.”

“Keep me informed when and as you can. Spring Barbara and turn your resistance operation over to him. We’ll see who ends up getting shitcanned.”

“Sir, you sort of wish you were in here, don’t you?”

“With all my heart.” No hesitation. “I’d dewheel that sonofabitch’s little red wagon in about twelve hours.”

Jackie doubted that, actually; things were different under the Dome. Outsiders couldn’t understand. Even time was different. Five days ago, everything had been normal. Now look.

“One other thing,” Colonel Cox said. “Take some time out of your busy schedule to look at the TV. We’re going to do our level best to make Rennie’s life uncomfortable.”

Jackie said goodbye and broke the connection. Then she walked back to where Ernie was gardening. “Got a generator?” she asked.

“Died last night,” he said with sour good cheer.

“Well, let’s go someplace where there’s a working TV. My friend says we should check out the news.”

They headed for Sweetbriar Rose. On their way they met Julia Shumway and brought her along.

1

Sweetbriar was closed until 5 PM, at which time Rose planned to offer a light supper, mostly leftovers. She was making potato salad and keeping an eye on the TV over the counter when the knocking on the door started. It was Jackie Wettington, Ernie Calvert, and Julia Shumway. Rose crossed the empty restaurant, wiping her hands on her apron, and unlocked the door. Horace the Corgi trotted at Julia’s heel, ears up, grinning companionably. Rose made sure the CLOSED sign was still in place, then relocked the door behind them.

“Thanks,” Jackie said.

“Not at all,” Rose replied. “I wanted to see you anyway.”

“We came for that,” Jackie said, and pointed to the TV. “I was at Ernie’s, and we met Julia on our way here. She was sitting across the street from her place, mooning at the wreckage.”

“I was not mooning,” Julia said. “Horace and I were trying to figure how we’re going to get a paper out after the town meeting. It’ll have to be small—probably just two pages—but there
will
be a paper. My heart is set on it.”

Rose glanced back at the TV. On it, a pretty young woman was doing a stand-up. Beneath her was a banner reading EARLIER TODAY COURTESY ABC. All at once there was a bang and a fire-ball bloomed in the sky. The reporter flinched, cried out, wheeled around. By that point her cameraman was already zooming her out of the picture, homing in on the earthbound fragments of the Air Ireland jet.

“There’s nothing but reruns of the plane-crash footage,” Rose said. “If you haven’t seen it before, be my guest. Jackie, I saw Barbie late this morning—I took him some sandwiches and they let me go downstairs to where the cells are. I had Melvin Searles as my chaperone.”

“Lucky you,” Jackie said.

“How is he?” Julia asked. “Is he okay?”

“He looks like the wrath of God, but I think so, yes. He said … maybe I should tell you privately, Jackie.”

“Whatever it is, I think you can say it in front of Ernie and Julia.” Rose considered this, but only for a moment. If Ernie Calvert and Julia Shumway weren’t all right, nobody was. “He said I was supposed to talk to you. Make up with you, as if we’d had a fight. He said to tell you that I’m all right.”

Jackie turned to Ernie and Julia. It seemed to Rose that a question was asked and answered. “If Barbie says you are, then you are,” Jackie said, and Ernie nodded emphatically. “Hon, we’re putting together a little meeting tonight. At the Congo parsonage. It’s kind of a secret—”

“Not kind of, it
is,
” Julia said. “And given the way things are in town right now, the secret better not get out.”

“If it’s about what I think it’s about, I’m in.” Then Rose lowered her voice. “But not Anson. He’s wearing one of those goddam arm-bands.”

Just then the CNN BREAKING NEWS logo came on the TV screen, accompanied by the annoying minor-key disaster music the network was now playing with each new Dome story. Rose expected either Anderson Cooper or her beloved Wolfie—both were now based in Castle Rock—but it was Barbara Starr, the network’s Pentagon correspondent. She was standing outside the tent-and-trailer village serving as the Army’s forward base in Harlow.