6
Jackie was standing in the middle of Coggins's bedroom. There was a plain wooden cross on one wall and a plaque on another. The plaque read HIS EYE IS ON THE SPARROW. The coverlet of the bed was turned back. There were traces of blood on the sheet beneath.
"And this," Jackie said.
"Come around here."
Reluctantly, Linda did. Lying on the polished wood floor between the bed and the wall was a knotted length of rope. The knots were bloody.
"Looks like somebody beat him," Jackie said grimly. "Hard enough to knock him out, maybe. Then they laid him on the ..." She looked at the other woman. "No?"
"I take it you didn't grow up in a religious home," Linda said.
"I did so. We worshipped the Holy Trinity: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. What about you?"
"Plain old tapwater Baptist, but I heard about things like this. I think he was flagellating himself."
"Yug! People did that for sins, right?"
"Yes. And I don't think it ever went entirely out of style."
"Then this makes sense. Sort of. Go in the bathroom and look on the toilet tank."
Linda made no move to do so. The knotted rope was bad enough, the feel of the house--too empty, somehow--was worse.
"Go on. It's nothing that'll bite you, and I'll bet you a dollar to a dime that you've seen worse."
Linda went into the bathroom. Two magazines were lying on top of the toilet tank. One was a devotional, The Upper Room. The other was called Young Oriental Slits. Linda doubted if that one was sold in many religious bookshops.
"So," Jackie said. "Are we getting a picture here? He sits on the john, tosses the truffle--"
"Tosses the truffle ?" Linda giggled in spite of her nerves. Or because of them.
"It's what my mother used to call it," Jackie said. "Anyway, after he's done with that, he opens a medium-sized can of whoop-ass to expiate his sins, then goes to bed and has happy Asian dreams. This morning he gets up, refreshed and sin-free, does his morning devotionals, then rides into town on his bike. Make sense?"
It did. It just didn't explain why the house felt so wrong to her. "Let's check the radio station," she said. "Then we'll head into town ourselves and get coffee. I'm buying."
"Good," Jackie said. "I want mine black. Preferably in a hypo."
7
The low-slung, mostly glass WCIK studio was also locked, but speakers mounted beneath the eaves were playing "Good Night, Sweet Jesus" as interpreted by that noted soul singer Perry Como. Behind the studio the broadcast tower loomed, the flashing red lights at the top barely visible in the strong morning light. Near the tower was a long barnlike structure which Linda assumed must hold the station's generator and whatever other supplies it needed to keep beaming the miracle of God's love to western Maine, eastern New Hampshire, and possibly the inner planets of the solar system.
Jackie knocked, then hammered.
"I don't think anybody's here," Linda said ... but this place seemed wrong, too. And the air had a funny smell, stale and sallow. It reminded her of the way her mother's kitchen smelled, even after a good airing. Because her mother smoked like a chimney and believed the only things worth eating were those fried in a hot skillet greased with plenty of lard.
Jackie shook her head. "We heard someone, didn't we?"
Linda had no answer for that, because it was true. They had been listening to the station on their drive from the parsonage, and had heard a smooth deejay announcing the next record as "Another message of God's love in song."
This time the hunt for the key was longer, but Jackie finally found it in an envelope taped beneath the mailbox. With it was a scrap of paper on which someone had scrawled 1 6 9 3.
The key was a dupe, and a little sticky, but after some chivvying, it worked. As soon as they were in, they heard the steady beep of the security system. The keypad was on the wall. When Jackie punched in the numbers, the beeping quit. Now there was only the music. Perry Como had given way to something instrumental; Linda thought it sounded suspiciously like the organ solo from "In-AGadda-Da-Vida." The speakers in here were a thousand times better than the ones outside and the music was louder, almost like a living thing.
Did people work in this holier-than-thou racket? Linda wondered. Answer the phones? Do business? How could they?
There was something wrong in here, too. Linda was sure of it. The place felt more than creepy to her; it felt outright dangerous. When she saw that Jackie had unsnapped the strap on her service automatic, Linda did the same. The feel of the gun-butt under her hand was good. Thy rod and thy gun-butt, they comfort me, she thought.
"Hello?" Jackie called. "Reverend Coggins? Anybody?"
There was no answer. The reception desk was empty. To the left of it were two closed doors. Straight ahead was a window running the entire length of the main room. Linda could see blinking lights inside it. The broadcast studio, she assumed.
Jackie pushed the closed doors open with her foot, standing well back. Behind one was an office. Behind the other was a conference room of surprising luxury, dominated by a giant flat-screen TV. It was on, but muted. Anderson Cooper, almost life-sized, looked like he was doing his standup on Castle Rock's Main Street. The buildings were draped with flags and yellow ribbons. Linda saw a sign on the hardware store that read: SET THEM FREE. That made Linda feel even eerier. The super running across the bottom of the screen read DEFENSE DEPARTMENT SOURCES CLAIM MISSILE STRIKE IS IMMINENT.
"Why is the TV on?" Jackie asked.
"Because whoever was minding the store left it that way when--"
A booming voice interrupted her. "That was Raymond Howell's version of 'Christ My Lord and Leader.' "
Both women jumped.
"And this is Norman Drake, reminding you of three important facts: you're listening to the Revival Time Hour on WCIK, God loves you, and He sent his Son to die for you on Calvary's cross. It's nine twenty-five AM, and as we always like to remind you, time is short. Have you given your heart to the Lord? Back after this."
Norman Drake gave way to a silver-tongued devil selling the entire Bible on DVDs, and the best thing about it was you could pay in monthly installments and return the whole deal if you weren't just as happy as a pig in shit. Linda and Jackie went to the broadcast studio window and looked in. Neither Norman Drake nor the silver-tongued devil was there, but when the commercial ended and the deejay came back to announce the next song of praise, a green light turned red and a red light turned green. When the music started up, another red light went green.
"It's automated!" Jackie said. "The whole freaking thing!"
"Then why do we feel like someone's here? And don't say you don't."
Jackie didn't. "Because it's weird. The jock even does time-checks. Honey, this setup must have cost a fortune! Talk about the ghost in the machine--how long do you think it will run?"
"Probably till the propane runs out and the generator stops." Linda spotted another closed door and opened it with her foot, as Jackie had ... only, unlike Jackie, she drew her gun and held it, safety on and muzzle down, beside her leg.
It was a bathroom, and it was empty. There was, however, a picture of a very Caucasian Jesus on the wall.
"I'm not religious," Jackie said, "so you'll have to explain to me why people would want Jesus watching them poop."
Linda shook her head.
"Let's get out of here before I lose it," she said. "This place is the Radioland version of the Mary Celeste. "
Jackie looked around uneasily. "Well, the vibe is spooky, I'll give you that." She suddenly raised her voice in a harsh shout that made Linda jump. She wanted to tell Jackie not to yell like that. Because someone might hear her and come. Or something.
"Hey! Yo! Anybody here? Last chance!"
Nothing. No one.
Outside, Linda took a deep breath. "Once, when I was a teenager, some friends and I went to Bar Harbor, and we stopped for a picnic at this scenic turnout. There were half a dozen
of us. The day was clear, and you could see practically all the way to Ireland. When we were done eating, I said I wanted to take a picture. My friends were all horsing around and grabassing, and I kept backing up, trying to get everyone in the frame. Then this one girl--Arabella, my best friend back then--stopped trying to give this other girl a wedgie and shouted, 'Stop, Linda, stop !' I stopped and looked around. Know what I saw?"
Jackie shook her head.
"The Atlantic Ocean. I'd backed up all the way to the drop-off at the edge of the picnic area. There was a warning sign, but no fence or guardrail. One more step and I would have gone down. And how I felt then is how I felt in there."
"Lin, it was empty. "
"I don't think so. And I don't think you do, either."
"It was spooky, sure. But we checked the rooms--"
"Not the studio. Plus the TV was on and the music was too loud. You don't think they turn it up that loud ordinarily, do you?"
"How do I know what holy rollers do?" Jackie asked. "Maybe they were expecting the Apocolick."
"Lypse."
"Whatever. Do you want to check the storage barn?"
"Absolutely not," Linda said, and that made Jackie snort laughter.
"Okay. Our report is no sign of the Rev, correct?"
"Correct."
"Then we're off to town. And coffee."
Before getting into unit Two's shotgun seat, Linda took one more look at the studio building, sitting there wreathed in white-bread audio joy. There was no other sound; she realized she didn't hear a single bird singing, and wondered if they had all killed themselves smashing into the Dome. Surely that wasn't possible. Was it?
Jackie pointed at the mike. "Want me to give the place a shout through the loudspeaker? Say if anyone's hiding in there they should beat feet into town? Because--I just thought of this--maybe they were scared of us."
"What I want is for you to stop screwing around and get out of here."
Jackie didn't argue. She reversed down the short driveway to Little Bitch Road, and turned the cruiser toward The Mill.
8
Time passed. Religious music played. Norman Drake returned and announced that it was nine thirty-four, Eastern Daylight God Loves You Time. This was followed by an ad for Jim Rennie's Used Cars, delivered by the Second Selectman himself. "It's our annual Fall Sales Spectacular, and boy, did we overstock!" Big Jim said in a rueful thejoke's-on-me voice. "We've got Fords, Chevvies, Plymouths! We've got the hard-to-get Dodge Ram and even the harder-to-get Mustang! Folks, I'm sitting on not one or two but three Mustangs that are like new, one the famous V6 convertible, and each comes with the famous Jim Rennie Christian Guarantee. We service what we sell, we finance, and we do it all at low low prices. And right now"--he chuckled more ruefully than ever--"we've just GOT to clear this LOT ! So come on down! The coffeepot's always on, neighbor, and you'll love the feelin when Big Jim's dealin!"
A door neither woman had noticed eased open at the back of the studio. Inside were more blinking lights--a galaxy of them. The room was little more than a cubby choked with wires, splitters, routers, and electronic boxes. You would have said there was no room for a man. But The Chef was beyond skinny; he was emaciated. His eyes were only glitters sunk deep in his skull. His skin was pale and blotchy. His lips folded loosely inward over gums that had lost most of their teeth. His shirt and pants were filthy, and his hips were naked wings; Chef's underwear days were now just a memory. It is doubtful that Sammy Bushey would have recognized her missing husband. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in one hand (he could only eat soft things now) and a Glock 9 in the other.
He went to the window overlooking the parking lot, thinking he'd rush out and kill the intruders if they were still there; he had almost done it while they were inside. Only he'd been afraid. Because demons couldn't actually be killed. When their human bodies died, they just flew into another host. When they were between bodies, the demons looked like blackbirds. Chef had seen this in vivid dreams that came on the increasingly rare occasions when he slept.
They were gone, however. His atman had been too strong for them.
Rennie had told him he had to shut down out back, and Chef Bushey had, but he might have to start up some of the cookers again, because there had been a big shipment to Boston a week ago and he was almost out of product. He needed smoke. It was what his atman fed on these days.
But for now he had enough. He had given up on the blues music that had been so important to him in his Phil Bushey stage of life--B. B. King, Koko and Hound Dog Taylor, Muddy and Howlin' Wolf, even the immortal Little Walter--and he had given up on fucking; he had even pretty much given up on moving his bowels, had been constipated since July. But that was okay. What humiliated the body fed the atman.
He checked the parking lot and the road beyond once more to make sure the demons weren't lurking, then tucked the automatic into his belt at the small of his back and headed for the storage shed, which was actually more of a factory these days. A factory that was shut down, but he could and would fix that if necessary.
Chef went to get his pipe.
9
Rusty Everett stood looking into the storage shed behind the hospital. He was using a flashlight, because he and Ginny Tomlinson--now the administrative head of medical services in Chester's Mill, crazy as that was--had decided to kill the power to every part of the plant that didn't absolutely need it. From his left, in its own shed, he could hear the big generator roaring away, eating ever deeper into the current long tank of propane.
Most of the tanks are gone, Twitch had said, and by God, they were. According to the card on the door, there's supposed to be seven, but there's only two. On that, Twitch was wrong. There was only one. Rusty ran the beam of his flashlight over the blue CR HOSP stenciled on the tank's silver side below the supply company's Dead River logo.
"Told you," Twitch said from behind him, making Rusty jump.
"You told me wrong. There's only one."
"Bullshit!" Twitch stepped into the doorway. Looked while Rusty shone the beam around, highlighting boxes of supplies surrounding a large--and largely empty--center area. Said: "It's not bullshit."
"No."
"Fearless leader, someone is stealing our propane."
Rusty didn't want to believe this, but saw no way around it.
Twitch squatted down. "Look here."
Rusty dropped to one knee. The quarter-acre behind the hospital had been asphalted the previous summer, and without any cold weather to crack or buckle it--not yet, anyway--the area was a smooth black sheet. It made it easy to see the tire tracks in front of the shed's sliding doors.
"That looks like it could have been a town truck," Twitch remarked.
"Or any other big truck."
"Nevertheless, you might want to check the storage shed behind the Town Hall. Twitch no trust-um Big Chief Rennie. Him bad medicine."
"Why would he take our propane? The Selectmen have plenty of their own."
They walked to the door leading into the hospital's laundry--also shut down, at least for the time being. There was a bench beside the door. A sign posted on the bricks read SMOKING HERE WILL BE BANNED AS OF JANUARY 1ST. QUIT NOW AND AVOID THE RUSH!
Twitch took out his Marlboros and offered them to Rusty. Rusty waved them away, then reconsidered and took one. Twitch lit them up. "How do you know?" he asked.
"How do I know what?"
"That they've got plenty of their own. Have you checked?"
"No," Rusty said. "But if they were going to poach, why from us? Not only is stealing from the local hospital usually considered bad form by the better class of people, the post office is practically right next door. They must have some."
"Maybe Rennie and his friends already snatched the post office's gas. How much would they have, anyway? One tank? Two? Peanuts."
"I don't understand why they'd need any. It makes no sense."
"Nothing about any of this makes sense," Twitch said, and yawned so hugely
that Rusty could hear his jaws creak.
"You finished rounds, I take it?" Rusty had a moment to consider the surreal quality of that question. Since Haskell's death, Rusty had become the hospital's head doc, and Twitch--a nurse just three days ago--was now what Rusty had been: a physician's assistant.
"Yep." Twitch sighed. "Mr. Carty isn't going to live out the day."
Rusty had thought the same thing about Ed Carty, who was suffering from end-stage stomach cancer, a week ago, and the man was still hanging in. "Comatose?"
"Roger that, sensei."
Twitch was able to count their other patients off on the digits of one hand--which, Rusty knew, was extraordinarily lucky. He thought he might even have felt lucky, if he hadn't been so tired and worried.
"George Werner I'd call stable."
Werner, an Eastchester resident, sixty years old and obese, had suffered a myocardial infarction on Dome Day. Rusty thought he would pull through ... this time.
"As for Emily Whitehouse ..." Twitch shrugged. "It ain't good, sensei."
Emmy Whitehouse, forty years old and not even an ounce overweight, had suffered her own MI an hour or so after Rory Dinsmore's accident. It had been much worse than George Werner's because she'd been an exercise freak and had suffered what Doc Haskell had called "a health-club blowout."
"The Freeman girl is getting better, Jimmy Sirois is holding up, and Nora Coveland is totally cool. Out after lunch. On the whole, not so bad."
"No," Rusty said, "but it'll get worse. I guarantee you. And ... if you suffered a catastrophic head injury, would you want me to operate on you?"
"Not really," Twitch said. "I keep hoping Gregory House will show up."
Rusty butted his cigarette in the can and looked at the nearly empty supply shed. Maybe he should have a peek into the storage facility behind the Town Hall--what could it hurt?
This time he was the one who yawned.
"How long can you keep this up?" Twitch asked. All the banter had gone out of his voice. "I only ask because right now you're what this town's got."
"As long as I have to. What worries me is getting so tired I screw something up. And of facing stuff that's way beyond my skill set." He thought of Rory Dinsmore ... and Jimmy Sirois. Thinking of Jimmy was worse, because Rory was now beyond the possibility of medical mistakes. Jimmy, on the other hand ...