Rusty saw himself back in the operating room, listening to the soft bleep of the equipment. Saw himself looking down at Jimmy's pale bare leg, with a black line drawn on it where the cut would have to be made. Thought of Dougie Twitchell trying out his anesthesiologist skills. Felt Ginny Tomlinson slapping a scalpel into his gloved hand and then looking at him over the top of her mask with her cool blue eyes.
God spare me from that, he thought.
Twitch put a hand on Rusty's arm. "Take it easy," he said. "One day at a time."
"Fuck that, one hour at a time," Rusty said, and got up. "I have to go over to the Health Center, see what's shaking there. Thank Christ this didn't happen in the summer; we would've had three thousand tourists and seven hundred summer-camp kids on our hands."
"Want me to come?"
Rusty shook his head. "Check on Ed Carty again, why don't you? See if he's still in the land of the living."
Rusty took one more look at the supply shed, then plodded around the corner of the building and on a diagonal toward the Health Center on the far side of Catherine Russell Drive.
10
Ginny was at the hospital, of course; she would give Mrs. Coveland's new bundle of joy a final weigh-in before sending them home. The receptionist on duty at the Health Center was seventeen-year-old Gina Buffalino, who had exactly six weeks' worth of medical experience. As a candy striper. She gave Rusty a deer-in-the-headlights look when he came in that made his heart sink, but the waiting room was empty, and that was a good thing. A very good thing.
"Any callins?" Rusty asked.
"One. Mrs. Venziano, out on the Black Ridge Road. Her baby got his head caught between the bars of his playpen. She wanted an ambulance. I ... I told her to grease the kid's head up with olive oil and see if she could get him out that way. It worked."
Rusty grinned. Maybe there was hope for this kid yet. Gina, looking divinely relieved, grinned back.
"Place is empty, at least," Rusty said. "Which is great."
"Not quite. Ms. Grinnell is here--Andrea? I put her in three." Gina hesitated. "She seemed pretty upset."
Rusty's heart, which had begun to rise, sank back down again. Andrea Grinnell. And upset. Which meant she wanted a bump on her OxyContin prescription. Which he, in all good conscience, could not give, even supposing Andy Sanders had enough stock to fill it.
"Okay." He started down the hall to exam room three, then stopped and looked back. "You didn't page me."
Gina flushed. "She asked me specifically not to."
This puzzled Rusty, but only for a second. Andrea might have a pill problem, but she was no dummy. She'd known that if Rusty was over at the hospital, he was probably with Twitch. And Dougie Twitchell happened to be her baby brother, who even at the age of thirty-nine must be protected from the evil facts of life.
Rusty stood at the door with the black 3 decaled on it, trying to gather himself. This was going to be hard. Andrea wasn't one of the defiant boozers he saw who claimed that alcohol formed absolutely no part of their problems; nor was she one of the meth-heads who had been showing up with increasing frequency over the last year or so. Andrea's responsibility for her problem was more difficult to pinpoint, and that complicated the treatment. Certainly she'd been in agony after her fall. Oxy had been the best thing for her, allowing her to cope with the pain so she could sleep and begin therapy. It wasn't her fault that the drug which allowed her to do those things was the one doctors sometimes called hillbilly heroin.
He opened the door and went in, rehearsing his refusal. Kind but firm, he told himself. Kind but firm.
She was sitting in the corner chair under the cholesterol poster, knees together, head bowed over the purse in her lap. She was a big woman who now looked small. Diminished, somehow. When she raised her head to look at him and he saw how haggard her face was--the lines bracketing her mouth deep, the skin under her eyes almost black--he changed his mind and decided to write the scrip on one of Dr. Haskell's pink pads after all. Maybe after the Dome crisis was over, he'd try to get her into a detox program; threaten to tattle to her brother, if that was what it took. Now, however, he would give her what she needed. Because he had rarely seen need so stark.
"Eric ... Rusty ... I'm in trouble."
"I know. I can see it. I'll write you a--"
"No!" She was looking at him with something like horror. "Not even if I beg! I'm a drug addict and I have to get off! I'm just a darn old junkie !" Her face folded in on itself. She tried to will it straight again and couldn't. She put her hands over it instead. Big wrenching sobs that were hard to listen to came through her fingers.
Rusty went to her, going down on one knee and putting an arm around her. "Andrea, it's good that you want to stop--excellent--but this might not be the best time--"
She looked at him with streaming, reddened eyes. "You're right about that, it's the worst time, but it has to be now! And you mustn't tell Dougie or Rose. Can you help me? Can it even be done? Because I haven't been able to, not on my own. Those hateful pink pills! I put them in the medicine cabinet and say 'No more today,' and an hour later I'm taking them down again! I've never been in a mess like this, not in my whole life."
She dropped her voice as if confiding a great secret. "I don't think it's my back anymore, I think it's my brain telling my back to hurt so I can go on taking those damn pills."
"Why now, Andrea?"
She only shook her head. "Can you help me or not?"
"Yes, but if you're thinking about going cold turkey, don't. For one thing, you're apt to ..." For a brief moment he saw Jannie, shaking in her bed, muttering about the Great Pumpkin. "You're apt to have seizures."
She either didn't register that or set it aside. "How long?"
"To get past the physical part? Two weeks. Maybe three." And that's putting you on the fast track, he thought but didn't say.
She gripped his arm. Her hand was very cold. "Too slow."
An exceedingly unpleasant idea surfaced in Rusty's mind. Probably just transient paranoia brought on by stress, but persuasive. "Andrea, is someone blackmailing you?"
"Are you kidding? Everyone knows I take those pills, it's a small town." Which did not, in Rusty's opinion, actually answer the question. "What's the absolute shortest it can take?"
"With B12 shots--plus thiamine and vitamins--you might manage it in ten days. But you'd be miserable. You wouldn't be able to sleep much, and you'll have restless leg syndrome. Not mild, either, they don't call it kicking the habit for nothing. And you'd have to have someone administer the step-down dosage--someone who can hold the pills and won't give them to you when you ask. Because you will."
"Ten days?" She looked hopeful. "And this might be over by then anyway, yes? This Dome thing?"
"Maybe this afternoon. That's what we all hope."
"Ten days," she said. "Ten days."
And, he thought, you'll want those goddam things for the rest of your life. But this he didn't say aloud either.
11
Sweetbriar Rose had been extraordinarily busy for a Monday morning ... but of course there had never been a Monday morning like this in the town's history. Still, the patrons had left willingly enough when Rose announced the grill was closed, and wouldn't reopen until five that afternoon. "And by then, maybe you can all go over to Moxie's in Castle Rock and eat there!" she finished. That had brought spontaneous applause, even though Moxie's was a famously filthy greasepit.
"No lunch?" Ernie Calvert asked.
Rose looked at Barbie, who raised his hands to his shoulders. Don't ask me.
"Sandwiches," Rose said. "Until they're gone."
This had brought more applause. People seemed surprisingly upbeat this morning; there had been laughter and raillery. Perhaps the best sign of the town's improved mental health was at the rear of the restaurant, where the bullshit table was back in session.
The TV over the counter--now locked on CNN--was a big part of the reason. The talking heads had little more to broadcast than ru
mors, but most were hopeful. Several scientists who'd been interviewed said the Cruise had a good chance of smashing through and ending the crisis. One estimated the chances of success as "better than eighty percent." But of course he's at MIT in Cambridge, Barbie thought. He can afford optimism.
Now, as he scraped the grill, a knock came at the door. Barbie looked around and saw Julia Shumway, with three children clustered around her. They made her look like a junior high school teacher on a field trip. Barbie went to the door, wiping his hands on his apron.
"If we let everyone in who wants to eat, we'll be out of food in no time," Anson said irritably from where he was swabbing down tables. Rose had gone back to Food City to try and purchase more meat.
"I don't think she wants to eat," Barbie said, and he was right about that.
"Good morning, Colonel Barbara," Julia said with her little Mona Lisa smile. "I keep wanting to call you Major Barbara. Like the--"
"The play, I know." Barbie had heard this one a few times before. Like ten thousand. "Is this your posse?"
One of the children was an extremely tall, extremely skinny boy with a mop of dark brown hair; one was a stocky young fellow wearing baggy shorts and a faded 50 Cent tee-shirt; the third was a pretty little girl with a lightning bolt on her cheek. A decal rather than a tattoo, but it still gave her a certain savoir faire. He realized if he told her she looked like the middle-school version of Joan Jett, she wouldn't know who he was talking about.
"Norrie Calvert," Julia said, touching the riot grrl's shoulder. "Benny Drake. And this tall drink of water is Joseph McClatchey. Yesterday's protest demonstration was his idea."
"But I never meant anyone to get hurt," Joe said.
"And it wasn't your fault they did," Barbie told him. "So rest easy on that."
"Are you really the bull goose?" Benny asked, looking him over.
Barbie laughed. "No," he said. "I'm not even going to try and be the bull goose unless I absolutely have to."
"But you know the soldiers out there, right?" Norrie asked.
"Well, not personally. For one thing, they're Marines. I was Army."
"You're still Army, according to Colonel Cox," Julia said. She was wearing her cool little smile, but her eyes were dancing with excitement. "Can we talk to you? Young Mr. McClatchey has had an idea, and I think it's brilliant. If it works."
"It'll work," Joe said. "When it comes to computer shi--stuff, I'm the bull goose."
"Step into my office," Barbie said, and escorted them toward the counter.
12
It was brilliant, all right, but it was already going on ten thirty, and if they were really going to make this thing happen, they would have to move fast. He turned to Julia. "Do you have your cell ph--"
Julia slapped it smartly into his palm before he could finish. "Cox's number is in memory."
"Great. Now if I knew how to access the memory."
Joe took the phone. "What are you, from the Dark Ages?"
"Yes!" Barbie said. "When knights were bold and ladies fair went without their underwear."
Norrie laughed hard at that, and when she raised her fist, Barbie tapped her small fist with his big one.
Joe pushed a couple of buttons on the minuscule keypad. He listened, then handed the cell to Barbie.
Cox must still have been sitting with one hand on the phone, because he was already on when Barbie put Julia's cell to his ear.
"How's it going, Colonel?" Cox asked.
"We're basically okay."
"And that's a start."
Easy for you to say, Barbie thought. "I imagine things will remain basically okay until the missile either bounces off or punches through and does gross damage to the woods and farms on our side. Which the citizens of Chester's Mill would welcome. What are your guys saying?"
"Not much. No one is making any predictions."
"That's not what we're hearing on the TV."
"I don't have time to keep up with the talking heads." Barbie could hear the shrug in Cox's voice. "We're hopeful. We think we've got a shot. To coin a phrase."
Julia was opening and closing her hands in a What gives? gesture.
"Colonel Cox, I'm sitting here with four friends. One of them is a young man named Joe McClatchey, who's had a pretty cool idea. I'm going to put him on the phone with you right now--"
Joe was shaking his head hard enough to make his hair fly. Barbie paid no attention.
"--to explain it."
And he handed Joe the cell. "Talk," he said.
"But--"
"Don't argue with the bull goose, son. Talk."
Joe did so, diffidently at first, with a lot of ah s and erm s and y'know s, but as his idea took hold of him again he sped up, became articulate. Then he listened. After a little while he started to grin. A few moments later he said, "Yessir! Thank you, sir!" and handed the phone back to Barbie. "Check it out, they're gonna try to augment our Wi-Fi before they shoot the missile! Jesus, this is hot !" Julia grabbed his arm and Joe said, "I'm sorry, Miz Shumway, I mean jeepers. "
"Never mind that, can you really work this thing?"
"You kidding? No prob."
"Colonel Cox?" Barbie asked. "Is this true about the Wi-Fi?"
"We can't stop anything you folks want to try to do," Cox said. "I think you were the one who originally pointed that out to me. So we might as well help. You'll have the fastest Internet in the world, at least for today. That's some bright kid you got there, by the way."
"Yes sir, that was my impression," Barbie said, and gave Joe a thumbs-up. The kid was glowing.
Cox said, "If the boy's idea works and you record it, make sure we get a copy. We'll be making our own, of course, but the scientists in charge of this thing will want to see what the hit looks like from your side of the Dome."
"I think we can do better than that," Barbie said. "If Joe here can put this together, I think most of the town will be able to watch it live."
This time Julia raised her fist. Grinning, Barbie bumped it.
13
"Holee shit," Joe said. The awe on his face made him look eight instead of thirteen. The whipcrack confidence was gone from his voice. He and Barbie were standing about thirty yards from where Little Bitch Road ran up against the Dome. It wasn't the soldiers he was looking at, although they had turned around to observe; it was the warning band and the big red X sprayed on the Dome that had fascinated him.
"They're moving their bivouac point, or whatever you call it," Julia said. "The tents are gone."
"Sure. In about"--Barbie looked at his watch--"ninety minutes, it's going to get very hot over there. Son, you better get to it." But now that they were actually out here on the deserted road, Barbie began to wonder if Joe could do what he had promised.
"Yeah, but ... do you see the trees ?"
Barbie didn't understand at first. He looked at Julia, who shrugged. Then Joe pointed, and he saw. The trees on the Tarker's side of the Dome were dancing in a moderate fall wind, shedding leaves in colorful bursts that fluttered down around the watching Marine sentries. On The Mill side, the branches were barely moving and most of the trees were still fully dressed. Barbie was pretty sure air was coming through the barrier, but not with any force. The Dome was damping the wind. He thought of how he and Paul Gendron, the guy in the Sea Dogs cap, had come to the little stream and had seen the water piling up.
Julia said, "The leaves over here look ... I don't know ... listless, somehow. Limp."
"It's just because they've got a wind on their side and we've only got a puff of breeze," Barbie said, then wondered if that was really it. Or all of it. But what good did it do to speculate about the current air quality in Chester's Mill, when there was nothing they could do about it? "Go on, Joe. Do your thing."
They had swung by the McClatchey house in Julia's Prius to get Joe's PowerBook. (Mrs. McClatchey had made Barbie swear he would keep her son safe, and Barbie had so sworn.) Now Joe pointed at the road. "Here?"
Barbie raise
d his hands to the sides of his face and sighted at the red X. "Little to the left. Can you try it? See how it looks?"
"Yeah." Joe opened the PowerBook and turned it on. The Mac power-up chime sounded as pretty as ever, but Barbie thought he had never seen anything quite so surreal as the silver computer sitting on the patched asphalt of Little Bitch Road with its screen up. It seemed to summarize the last three days perfectly.
"Battery's fresh, so it should run for at least six hours," Joe said.
"Won't it go to sleep?" Julia asked.
Joe gave her an indulgent Mother, please look. Then he turned back to Barbie. "If the missile roasts my Pro, do you promise to buy me another one?"
"Uncle Sam will buy you another one," Barbie promised. "I'll put in the requisition myself."
"Sweet."
Joe bent over the PowerBook. There was a little silver barrel mounted atop the screen. This, Joe had told them, was some current compu-miracle called iSight. He ran his finger over the computer's touchpad, hit ENTER, and suddenly the screen filled with a brilliant image of Little Bitch Road. From ground level, each little bump and irregularity in the tar looked like a mountain. At mid-range, Barbie could see the Marine sentries up to their knees.
"Sir, does he have a picture, sir?" one of them asked.
Barbie looked up. "Let's put it this way, Marine--if I was doing inspection, you'd be doing push-ups with my foot in your ass. There's a scuff on your left boot. Unacceptable on a noncombat assignment."
The Marine looked down at his boot, which was indeed scuffed. Julia laughed. Joe did not. He was absorbed. "It's too low. Miz Shumway, have you got something in the car we can use to--?" He raised his hand about three feet off the road.
"I do," she said.
"And get me my little gym bag, please." He fiddled some more with the PowerBook, then held out his hand. "Cell?"
Barbie handed it to him. Joe hit the tiny buttons with blinding speed. Then: "Benny? Oh, Norrie, okay. You guys there? ... Good. Never been in a beerjoint before, I bet. You ready? ... Excellent. Stand by." He listened, then grinned. "Are you kidding? Dude, according to what I'm getting, the jack is awesome. They're blasting the Wi-Fi. Gotta jet." He snapped the phone closed and handed it back to Barbie.