Under the Dome

  He did not ask Where have you been? He did not ask What's wrong with you?, although it was obvious, in the unforgiving first light that flooded the kitchen, that something was. But he did have a question.

  "There are bodies. Plural. Is that right?"

  "Yes." Junior took a big bite of his beefstick and washed it down with Coke. The kitchen was weirdly silent without the hum of the fridge and the burble of the Mr. Coffee.

  "And all these bodies can be laid at Mr. Barbara's door?"

  "Yes. All." Another chomp. Another swallow. Junior looking at him steadily, rubbing his left temple as he did so.

  "Can you plausibly discover those bodies around noon today?"

  "No prob."

  "And the evidence against our Mr. Barbara, of course."

  "Yes." Junior smiled. "It's good evidence."

  "Don't report to the police station this morning, son."

  "I better," Junior said. "It might look funny if I don't. Besides, I'm not tired. I slept with ..." He shook his head. "I slept, leave it at that."

  Big Jim also did not ask Who did you sleep with? He had other concerns than whom his son might be diddling; he was just glad the boy hadn't been among the fellows who'd done their business with that nasty piece of trailer trash out on Motton Road. Doing business with that sort of girl was a good way to catch something and get sick.

  He's already sick, a voice in Big Jim's head whispered. It might have been the fading voice of his wife. Just look at him.

  That voice was probably right, but this morning he had greater concerns than Junior Rennie's eating disorder, or whatever it was.

  "I didn't say go to bed. I want you on motor patrol, and I want you to do a job for me. Just stay away from Food City while you're doing it. There's going to be trouble there, I think."

  Junior's eyes livened up. "What kind of trouble?"

  Big Jim didn't answer directly. "Can you find Sam Verdreaux?"

  "Sure. He'll be in that little shack out on God Creek Road. Ordinarily he'd be sleeping it off, but today he's more apt to be shaking himself awake with the DTs." Junior snickered at this image, then winced and went back to rubbing his temple. "You really think I'm the person to talk to him? He's not my biggest fan right now. He's probably even deleted me from his Facebook page."

  "I don't understand."

  "It's a joke, Dad. Forget it."

  "Do you think he'd warm up to you if you offered him three quarts of whiskey? And more later, if he does a good job?"

  "That skanky old bastard would warm up to me if I offered him half a juice glass of Two-Buck Chuck."

  "You can get the whiskey from Brownie's," Big Jim said. In addition to cheapass groceries and beaver-books, Brownie's was one of three agency liquor stores in The Mill, and the PD had keys to all three. Big Jim slid the key across the table. "Back door. Don't let anyone see you going in."

  "What's Sloppy Sam supposed to do for the booze?"

  Big Jim explained. Junior listened impassively ... except for his bloodshot eyes, which danced. He had only one more question: Would it work?

  Big Jim nodded. "It will. I'm feeling it. "

  Junior took another chomp on his beefstick and another swallow of his soda. "So'm I, Dad," he said. "So'm I."

  7

  When Junior was gone, Big Jim went into his study with his robe billowing grandly around him. He took his cell phone from the center drawer of his desk, where he kept it as much as possible. He thought they were Godless things that did nothing but encourage a lot of loose and useless talk--how many man-hours had been lost to useless gabble on these things? And what kind of nasty rays did they shoot into your head while you were gabbling?

  Still, they could come in handy. He reckoned that Sam Verdreaux would do as Junior told him, but he also knew it would be foolish not to take out insurance.

  He selected a number in the cell phone's "hidden" directory, which could be accessed only via numeric code. The phone rang half a dozen times before it was picked up. "What?" the sire of the multitudinous Killian brood barked.

  Big Jim winced and held the phone away from his ear for a second. When he put it back, he heard low clucking sounds in the background. "Are you in the chickenhouse, Rog?"

  "Uh ... yessir, Big Jim, I sure am. Chickens got to be fed, come hell or high water." A 180-degree turn from irritation to respect. And Roger Killian ought to be respectful; Big Jim had made him a gosh-darn millionaire. If he was wasting what could have been a good life with no financial worries by still getting up at dawn to feed a bunch of chickens, that was God's will. Roger was too dumb to stop. It was his heaven-sent nature, and would no doubt serve Big Jim well today.

  And the town, he thought. It's the town I'm doing this for. The good of the town.

  "Roger, I've got a job for you and your three oldest sons."

  "Only got two t'home," Roger said. In his thick Yankee accent, home came out hum. "Ricky and Randall are here, but Roland was in Oxford buying feed when the Christing Dome came down." He paused and considered what he had just said. In the background, the chickens clucked. "Sorry about the profanity."

  "I'm sure God forgives you," Big Jim said. "You and your two oldest, then. Can you get them to town by--" Big Jim calculated. It didn't take long. When you were feeling it, few decisions did. "Say, nine o'clock, nine fifteen at the latest?"

  "I'll have to rouse em, but sure," Roger said. "What are we doin? Bringin in some of the extra propa--"

  "No," Big Jim said, "and you hush about that, God love you. Just listen."

  Big Jim talked.

  Roger Killian, God love him, listened.

  In the background roughly eight hundred chickens clucked as they stuffed themselves with steroid-laced feed.

  8

  "What? What? Why? "

  Jack Cale was sitting at his desk in the cramped little Food City manager's office. The desk was littered with inventory lists he and Ernie Calvert had finally completed at one in the morning, their hopes of finishing earlier dashed by the meteor shower. Now he swept them up--handwritten on long yellow legal-pad sheets--and shook them at Peter Randolph, who stood in the office doorway. The new Chief had dolled up in full uniform for this visit. "Look at these, Pete, before you do something foolish."

  "Sorry, Jack. Market's closed. It'll reopen on Thursday, as a food depot. Share and share alike. We'll keep all the records, Food City Corp won't lose a cent, I promise you--"

  "That's not the point, " Jack nearly groaned. He was a baby-faced thirtysomething with a thatch of wiry red hair he was currently torturing with the hand not holding out the yellow sheets ... which Peter Randolph showed no signs of taking.

  "Here! Here! What in the name of jumped-up Jack Sprat Jesus are you talking about, Peter Randolph?"

  Ernie Calvert came barreling up from the basement storage area. He was broad-bellied and red-faced, his gray hair mowed into the crewcut he'd worn all his life. He was wearing a green Food City duster.

  "He wants to close the market!" Jack said.

  "Why in God's name would you want to do that, when there's still plenty of food?" Ernie asked angrily. "Why would you want to go scaring people like that? They'll be plenty scared in time, if this goes on. Whose dumb idea was this?"

  "Selectmen voted," Randolph said. "Any problems you have with the plan, take them up at the special town meeting on Thursday night. If this isn't over by then, of course."

  "What plan?" Ernie shouted. "Are you telling me Andrea Grinnell was in favor of this? She knows better!"

  "I understand she's got the flu," Randolph said. "Flat on her back. So Andy decided. Big Jim seconded the decision." No one had told him to put it this way; no one had to. Randolph knew how Big Jim liked to do business.

  "Rationing might make sense at some point," Jack said, "but why now?" He shook the sheets again, his cheeks almost as red as his hair. "Why, when we've still got so much ?"

  "That's the best time to start conserving," Randolph said.

  "That's rich, comi
ng from a man with a powerboat on Sebago Lake and a Winnebago Vectra in his dooryard," Jack said.

  "Don't forget Big Jim's Hummer," Ernie put in.

  "Enough," Randolph said. "The Selectmen decided--"

  "Well, two of them did," Jack said.

  "You mean one of them did," Ernie said. "And we know which one."

  "--and I carried the message, so there's an end to it. Put a sign in the window. MARKET CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE."

  "Pete. Look. Be reasonable." Ernie no longer seemed angry; now he seemed almost to be pleading. "That'll scare the dickens out of people. If you're set on this, how about I put CLOSED FOR INVENTORY, WILL REOPEN SOON? Maybe add SORRY FOR THE TEMPORARY INCONVENIENCE. Put TEMPORARY in red, or something."

  Peter Randolph shook his head slowly and weightily. "Can't let you, Ern. Couldn't let you even if you were still an official employee, like him." He nodded to Jack Cale, who had put down the inventory sheets so he could torture his hair with both hands. "CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. That's what the Selectmen told me, and I carry out their orders. Besides, lies always come back to bite you on the ass."

  "Yeah, well, Duke Perkins would have told them to take this particular order and wipe their asses with it," Ernie said. "You ought to be ashamed, Pete, carrying that fat shit's water. He says jump, you ask how high."

  "You want to shut up right now, if you know what's good for you," Randolph said, pointing at him. The finger shook a little. "If you don't want to spend the rest of the day in jail on a disrespect charge, you just want to close your mouth and follow orders. This is a crisis situation--"

  Ernie looked at him unbelievingly. " 'Disrespect charge?' No such animal!"

  "There is now. If you don't believe it, go on and try me."

  9

  Later on--much too late to do any good--Julia Shumway would piece together most of how the Food City riot started, although she never got a chance to print it. Even if she had, she would have done so as a pure news story: the five Ws and the H. If asked to write about the emotional heart of the event, she would have been lost. How to explain that people she'd known all her life--people she respected, people she loved--had turned into a mob? She told herself I could've gotten a better handle on it if I'd been there from the very beginning and seen how it started, but that was pure rationalization, a refusal to face the orderless, reasonless beast that can arise when frightened people are provoked. She had seen such beasts on the TV news, usually in foreign countries. She never expected to see one in her own town.

  And there was no need for it. This was what she kept coming back to. The town had been cut off for only seventy hours, and it was stuffed with provisions of almost every kind; only propane gas was in mysteriously short supply.

  Later she would say, It was the moment when this town finally realized what was happening. There was probably truth in the idea, but it didn't satisfy her. All she could say with complete certainty (and she said it only to herself) was that she watched her town lose its mind, and afterward she would never be the same person.

  10

  The first two people to see the sign are Gina Buffalino and her friend Harriet Bigelow. Both girls are dressed in white nurse's uniforms (this was Ginny Tomlinson's idea; she felt the whites inspired more confidence among the patients than candy-striper pinafores), and they look most seriously cute. They also look tired, in spite of their youthful resiliency. It has been a hard two days, and another is ahead of them, after a night of short sleep. They have come for candy bars--they will get enough for everyone but poor diabetic Jimmy Sirois, that's the plan--and they are talking about the meteor shower. The conversation stops when they see the sign on the door.

  "The market can't be closed," Gina says unbelievingly. "It's Tuesday morning." She puts her face to the glass with her hands cupped to the sides to cut the glare of the bright morning sun.

  While she's so occupied, Anson Wheeler drives up with Rose Twitchell riding shotgun. They have left Barbie back at Sweetbriar, finishing up the breakfast service. Rose is out of the little panel truck with her namesake painted on the side even before Anson has turned off the engine. She has a long list of staples, and wants to get as much as she can, as soon as she can. Then she sees CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE posted on the door.

  "What the hell? I saw Jack Cale just last night, and he never said a word about this."

  She's speaking to Anson, who's chugging along in her wake, but it's Gina Buffalino who answers. "It's still full of stuff, too. All the shelves are stocked."

  Other people are pulling in. The market is due to open in five minutes, and Rose isn't the only one who planned to get an early start on her marketing; folks from all over town woke up to find the Dome still in place and decided to stock up on supplies. Asked later to explain this sudden rush of custom, Rose would say: "The same thing happens every winter when the Weather Bureau upgrades a storm warning to a blizzard warning. Sanders and Rennie couldn't have picked a worse day to pull this bullshit."

  Among the early arrivals are Units Two and Four of the Chester's Mill PD. Close behind them comes Frank DeLesseps in his Nova (he's ripped off the ASS, GAS, OR GRASS sticker, feeling it hardly becomes an officer of the law). Carter and Georgia are in Two; Mel Searles and Freddy Denton in Four. They have been parked down the street by LeClerc's Maison des Fleurs, by order of Chief Randolph. "No need to get there too soon," he has instructed them. "Wait until there are a dozen or so cars in the parking lot. Hey, maybe they'll just read the sign and go home."

  This doesn't happen, of course, just as Big Jim Rennie knew it wouldn't. And the appearance of the officers--especially such young and callow ones, for the most part--acts as an incitement rather than a calmative. Rose is the first to begin haranguing them. She picks on Freddy, showing him her long list of supplies, then pointing through the window, where most of the stuff she wants is ranked neatly on the shelves.

  Freddy is polite to begin with, aware that people (not quite a crowd, not yet) are watching, but it's hard to keep his temper with this mouthy little pipsqueak in his face. Doesn't she realize he's only following orders?

  "Who do you think is feeding this town, Fred?" Rose asks. Anson puts a hand on her shoulder. Rose shakes it off. She knows Freddy is seeing rage instead of the deep distress she feels, but she can't help it. "Do you think a Sysco truck full of supplies is just going to parachute down from the sky?"

  "Ma'am--"

  "Oh, can it! Since when am I a ma'am to you? You've been eating blueberry pancakes and that nasty limp bacon you like at my place four and five days a week for twenty years, and calling me Rosie while you did it. But you won't be eating pancakes tomorrow unless I get some flour and some shortening and some syrup and ..." She breaks off. "Finally! Sense! Thank You, God!"

  Jack Cale is opening one of the double doors. Mel and Frank have taken up station in front of it, and he has just room to squeeze between them. The prospective shoppers--there are nearly two dozen now, even though the market's official opening time of nine AM is still a minute away--surge forward, only to stop when Jack selects a key from the bunch on his belt, and locks up again. There's a collective groan.

  "Why the hell'd you do that?" Bill Wicker calls out indignantly. "My wife sent me down for aigs!"

  "Take it up with the Selectmen and Chief Randolph," Jack responds. His hair is raring every whichway. He throws Frank DeLesseps a black look and fires an even blacker one at Mel Searles, who is trying unsuccessfully to suppress a grin, perhaps even his famous nyuck-nyuck-nyuck. "I know I will. But for now, I've had enough of this shit. I'm done." He strides off through the crowd with his head down and his cheeks burning even brighter than his hair. Lissa Jamieson, just arriving on her bicycle (everything on her list will fit into the milk box perched on the rear fender; her wants are small-going-on-minuscule), has to swerve to avoid him.

  Carter, Georgia, and Freddy are ranged in front of the large plate-glass window, where Jack would have set out wheelbarrows and fertilizer on an ordinary day. C
arter's fingers are Band-Aided, and a thicker bandage bulks under his shirt. Freddy has his hand on his gun-butt as Rose Twitchell continues to chew on him, and Carter wishes he could backhand her one. His fingers are okay, but his shoulder aches a bitch. The small cluster of would-be shoppers has become a large cluster, and more cars are turning into the parking lot.

  Before Officer Thibodeau can really study the crowd, however, Alden Dinsmore gets into his personal space. Alden looks haggard, and seems to have lost twenty pounds since the death of his son. He's wearing a black mourning band on his left arm and seems dazed.

  "Need to go in, son. My wife sent me to stock up on the canned." Alden doesn't say the canned what. Probably the canned everything. Or maybe he just got thinking about the empty bed upstairs, the one that will never be filled again, and the Foo Fighters poster that will never be looked at again, and the model airplane on the desk that will never be finished, and clean forgot.

  "Sorry, Mr. Dimmesdale," Carter says. "You can't do that."

  "It's Dinsmore," Alden says in a dazed voice. He starts toward the doors. They are locked, no way he can get in, but Carter still gives the farmer a good hearty shove backward. For the first time, Carter has some sympathy for the teachers who used to send him to detention back in high school; it is irritating not to be minded.

  Also it's hot and his shoulder aches in spite of the two Percocet his mother gave him. Seventy-five at nine AM is rare in October, and the faded blue color of the sky says it will be hotter by noon, hotter still by three PM.

  Alden stumbles backward into Gina Buffalino, and they both would fall if not for Petra Searles--no lightweight she--steadying them. Alden doesn't look angry, only puzzled. "M'wife sent me for the canned," he explains to Petra.

  A mutter comes from the gathering people. It's not an angry sound--not quite yet. They came for groceries and the groceries are there but the door is locked. Now a man has been shoved by a high-school dropout who was a car mechanic last week.

  Gina is looking at Carter, Mel, and Frank DeLesseps with widening eyes. She points. "Those are the guys that raped her!" she tells her friend Harriet without lowering her voice. "Those are the guys that raped Sammy Bushey!"