Under the Dome

  "Dr. Rusty will be glad you're back. And so is Walter. Do you need any pain medication?"

  "No." This was true. Her privates still ached and throbbed, but that was far away. She felt as if she were floating above herself, tethered to earth by the thinnest of strings.

  "Good. That means you're getting better."

  "Yes," Sammy said. "Soon I'll be well."

  "When you've finished feeding him, climb on into bed, why don't you? Dr. Rusty will be in to check on you in the morning."

  "All right."

  "Good night, Ms. Bouchez."

  "Good night, Doctor."

  Thurse closed the door softly and continued down the hall. At the end of the corridor was the Roux girl's room. One peek in there and then he'd call it a night.

  She was glassy but awake. The young man who'd been visiting her was not. He sat in the corner, snoozing in the room's only chair with a sports magazine on his lap and his long legs sprawled out in front of him.

  Georgia beckoned Thurse, and when he bent over her, she whispered something. Because of the low voice and her broken, mostly toothless mouth, he only got a word or two. He leaned closer.

  "Doh wake im." To Thurse, she sounded like Homer Simpson. "He'th the oney one who cay to visih me."

  Thurse nodded. Visiting hours were long over, of course, and given his blue shirt and his sidearm, the young man would probably be gigged for not responding to the fire whistle, but still--what harm? One firefighter more or less probably wouldn't make any difference, and if the guy was too far under for the sound of the whistle to wake him, he probably wouldn't be much help, anyway. Thurse put a finger to his lips and blew the young woman a shhh to show they were conspirators. She tried to smile, then winced.

  Thurston didn't offer her pain medication in spite of that; according to the chart at the end of the bed, she was maxed until two AM. Instead he just went out, closed the door softly behind him, and walked back down the sleeping hallway. He didn't notice that the door to the BABY ON BOARD room was once more ajar.

  The couch in the lounge called to him seductively as he went by, but Thurston had decided to go back to Highland Avenue after all.

  And check the kids.

  4

  Sammy sat by the bed with Little Walter in her lap until the new doctor went by. Then she kissed her son on both cheeks and the mouth. "You be a good baby," she said. "Mama is going to see you in heaven, if they let her in. I think they will. She's done her time in hell."

  She laid him in his crib, then opened the drawer of the bedtable. She had put the gun inside so Little Walter wouldn't feel it poking into him while she held him and fed him for the last time. Now she took it out.

  5

  Lower Main Street was blocked off by nose-to-nose police cars with their jackpot lights flashing. A crowd, silent and unexcited--almost sullen--stood behind them, watching.

  Horace the Corgi was ordinarily a quiet dog, limiting his vocal repertoire to a volley of welcome-home barks or the occasional yap to remind Julia he was still present and accounted for. But when she pulled over to the curb by Maison des Fleurs, he let out a low howl from the backseat. Julia reached back blindly to stroke his head. Taking comfort as much as giving it.

  "Julia, my God," Rose said.

  They got out. Julia's original intention was to leave Horace behind, but when he uttered another of those small, bereft howls--as if he knew, as if he really knew--she fished under the passenger seat for his leash, opened the rear door for him to jump out, and then clipped the leash to his collar. She grabbed her personal camera, a pocket-sized Casio, from the seat pocket before closing the door. They pushed through the crowd of bystanders on the sidewalk, Horace leading the way, straining at his leash.

  Piper Libby's cousin Rupe, a part-time cop who'd come to The Mill five years ago, tried to stop them. "No one beyond this point, ladies."

  "That's my place," Julia said. "Up top is everything I own in the world--clothes, books, personal possessions, the lot. Underneath is the newspaper my great-grandfather started. It's only missed four press dates in over a hundred and twenty years. Now it's going up in smoke. If you want to stop me from watching it happen--at close range--you'll have to shoot me."

  Rupe looked unsure, but when she started forward again (Horace now at her knee and looking up at the balding man mistrustfully), Rupe stood aside. But only momentarily.

  "Not you," he told Rose.

  "Yes, me. Unless you want ex-lax in the next chocolate frappe you order."

  "Ma'am ... Rose ... I have my orders."

  "Devil take your orders," Julia said, with more weariness than defiance. She took Rose by the arm and led her down the sidewalk, stopping only when she felt the shimmer against her face rise from preheat to bake.

  The Democrat was an inferno. The dozen or so cops weren't even trying to put it out, but they had plenty of Indian pumps (some still bearing stickers she could read easily in the firelight: ANOTHER BURPEE'S SALE DAYS SPECIAL!) and they were wetting down the drugstore and the bookstore. Given the windless conditions, Julia thought they might save both ... and thus the rest of the business buildings on the east side of Main.

  "Wonderful that they turned out so quick," Rose said.

  Julia said nothing, only watched the flames whooshing up into the dark, blotting out the pink stars. She was too shocked to cry.

  Everything, she thought. Everything.

  Then she remembered the one bundle of newspapers she had tossed in her trunk before leaving to meet with Cox and amended that to Almost everything.

  Pete Freeman pushed through the ring of police who were currently dousing the front and north side of Sanders Hometown Drug. The only clean spots on his face were where tears had cut through the soot.

  "Julia, I'm so sorry!" He was nearly wailing. "We almost had it stopped ... would have had it stopped ... but then the last one ... the last bottle the bastards threw landed on the papers by the door and ..." He wiped his remaining shirtsleeve across his face, smearing the soot there. "I'm so goddam sorry!"

  She took him in her arms as if he were a baby, although Pete was six inches taller and outweighed her by a hundred pounds. She hugged him, trying to mind his hurt arm, and said: "What happened?"

  "Firebombs," he sobbed. "That fucking Barbara."

  "He's in jail, Pete."

  "His friends! His goddam friends ! They did it!"

  "What? You saw them?"

  "Heard em," he said, pulling back to look at her. "Would've been hard not to. They had a bullhorn. Said if Dale Barbara wasn't freed, they'd burn the whole town." He grinned bitterly. "Free him? We ought to hang him. Give me a rope and I'll do it myself."

  Big Jim came strolling up. The fire painted his cheeks orange. His eyes glittered. His smile was so wide that it stretched almost to his earlobes.

  "How do you like your friend Barbie now, Julia?"

  Julia stepped toward him, and there must have been something on her face, because Big Jim fell back a step, as if afraid she might take a swing at him. "This makes no sense. None. And you know it."

  "Oh, I think it does. If you can bring yourself to consider the idea that Dale Barbara and his friends were the ones who set up the Dome in the first place, I think it makes perfect sense. It was an act of terrorism, pure and simple."

  "Bullshit. I was on his side, which means the newspaper was on his side. He knew that."

  "But they said--" Pete began.

  "Yes," she said, but she didn't look at him. Her eyes were still fixed on Rennie's firelit face. "They said, they said, but who the hell is they ? Ask yourself that, Pete. Ask yourself this: if it wasn't Barbie--who had no motive--then who did have a motive? Who benefits by shutting Julia Shumway's troublesome mouth?"

  Big Jim turned and motioned to two of the new officers--identifiable as cops only by the blue bandannas knotted around their biceps. One was a tall, hulking bruiser whose face suggested he was still little more than a child, no matter his size. The other could only be a Killian
; that bullet head was as distinctive as a commemorative stamp. "Mickey. Richie. Get these two women off the scene."

  Horace was crouched at the end of his leash, growling at Big Jim. Big Jim gave the little dog a contemptuous look.

  "And if they won't go voluntarily, you have my permission to pick them up and throw them over the hood of the nearest police car."

  "This isn't finished," Julia said, pointing a finger at him. Now she was beginning to cry herself, but the tears were too hot and painful to be those of sorrow. "This isn't done, you son of a bitch."

  Big Jim's smile reappeared. It was as shiny as the finish on his Hummer. And as black. "Yes it is," he said. "Done deal."

  6

  Big Jim started back toward the fire--he wanted to watch it until there was nothing left of the noseyparker's newspaper but a pile of ashes--and swallowed a mouthful of smoke. His heart suddenly stopped in his chest and the world seemed to go swimming past him like some kind of special effect. Then his ticker started again, but in a flurry of irregular beats that made him gasp. He slammed a fist against the left side of his chest and coughed hard, a quick-fix for arrhythmia that Dr. Haskell had taught him.

  At first his heart continued its irregular galloping (beat ... pause ... beatbeatbeat ... pause), but then it settled back to its normal rhythm. For just a moment he saw it encased in a dense globule of yellow fat, like a living thing that has been buried alive and struggles to get free before the air is all gone. Then he pushed the image away.

  I'm all right. It's just overwork. Nothing seven hours of sleep won't cure.

  Chief Randolph came over, an Indian pump strapped to his broad back. His face was running with sweat. "Jim? You all right?"

  "Fine," Big Jim said. And he was. He was. This was the high point of his life, his chance to achieve the greatness of which he knew he'd always been capable. No dickey ticker was going to take that away from him. "Just tired. I've been running pretty much nonstop."

  "Go home," Randolph advised. "I never thought I'd say thank God for the Dome, and I'm not saying it now, but at least it works as a windbreak. We're going to be all right. I've got men on the roofs of the drugstore and the bookstore in case any sparks jump, so go on and--"

  "Which men?" His heartbeat smoothing out, smoothing out. Good.

  "Henry Morrison and Toby Whelan on the bookstore. Georgie Frederick and one of those new kids on the drug. A Killian brat, I think. Rommie Burpee volunteered to go up with em."

  "Got your walkie?"

  "Course I do."

  "And Frederick's got his?"

  "All the regulars do."

  "Tell Frederick to keep an eye on Burpee."

  "Rommie? Why, for Lord sake?"

  "I don't trust him. He could be a friend of Barbara's." Although it wasn't Barbara Big Jim was worried about when it came to Burpee. The man had been a friend of Brenda's. And the man was sharp.

  Randolph's sweaty face was creased. "How many do you think there are? How many on the sonofabitch's side?"

  Big Jim shook his head. "Hard to say, Pete, but this thing is big. Must've been in the planning stages for a long time. You can't just look at the newbies in town and say it's got to be them. Some of the people in on it could have been here for years. Decades, even. It's what they call deep cover."

  "Christ. But why, Jim? Why, in God's name?"

  "I don't know. Testing, maybe, with us for guinea pigs. Or maybe it's a power grab. I wouldn't put it past that thug in the White House. What matters is we're going to have to beef up security and watch for the liars trying to undermine our efforts to keep order."

  "Do you think she--" He inclined his head toward Julia, who was watching her business go up in smoke with her dog sitting beside her, panting in the heat.

  "I don't know for sure, but the way she was this afternoon? Storming around the station, yelling to see him? What does that tell you?"

  "Yeah," Randolph said. He was looking at Julia Shumway with flat-eyed consideration. "And burning up your own place, what better cover than that?"

  Big Jim pointed a finger at him as if to say You could have a bingo there. "I have to get off my feet. Get on the horn to George Frederick. Tell him to keep his good weather eye on that Lewiston Canuck."

  "All right." Randolph unclipped his walkie-talkie.

  Behind them, Fernald Bowie shouted: "Roof's comin down! You on the street, stand back! You men on top of those other buildings at the ready, at the ready!"

  Big Jim watched with one hand on the driver's door of his Hummer as the roof of the Democrat caved in, sending a gusher of sparks straight up into the black sky. The men posted on the adjacent buildings checked that their partners' Indian pumps were primed and then stood at parade rest, waiting for sparks with their nozzles in their hands.

  The expression on Shumway's face as the Democrat 's roof let go did Big Jim's heart more good than all the cotton-picking medicines and pacemakers in the world. For years he'd been forced to put up with her weekly tirades, and while he wouldn't admit he had been afraid of her, he surely had been annoyed.

  But look at her now, he thought. Looks like she came home and found her mother dead on the pot.

  "You look better," Randolph said. "Your color's coming back."

  "I feel better," Big Jim said. "But I'll still go home. Grab some shuteye."

  "That's a good idea," Randolph said. "We need you, my friend. Now more than ever. And if this Dome thing doesn't go away ..." He shook his head, his basset-hound eyes never leaving Big Jim's face. "I don't know how we'd get along without you, put it that way. I love Andy Sanders like a brother but he doesn't have much in the way of brains. And Andrea Grinnell hasn't been worth a tin shit since she fell and hurt her back. You're the glue that holds Chester's Mill together."

  Big Jim was moved by this. He gripped Randolph's arm and squeezed. "I'd give my life for this town. That's how much I love it."

  "I know. Me too. And no one's going to steal it out from under us."

  "Got that right," Big Jim said.

  He drove away, mounting the sidewalk to get past the roadblock that had been placed at the north end of the business district. His heart was steady in his chest again (well, almost), but he was troubled, nonetheless. He'd have to see Everett. He didn't like the idea; Everett was another noseyparker bent on causing trouble at a time when the town had to pull together. Also, he was no doctor. Big Jim would almost have felt better about trusting a vet with his medical problems, except there was none in town. He'd have to hope that if he needed medicine, something to regularize his heartbeat, Everett would know the right kind.

  Well, he thought, whatever he gives me, I can check it out with Andy.

  Yes, but that wasn't the biggest thing troubling him. It was something else Pete had said: If this Dome thing doesn't go away ...

  Big Jim wasn't worried about that. Quite the opposite. If the Dome did go away--too soon, that was--he could be in a fair spot of trouble even if the meth lab wasn't discovered. Certainly there would be cotton-pickers who would second-guess his decisions. One of the rules of political life that he'd grasped early was Those who can, do; those who can't, question the decisions of those who can. They might not understand that everything he'd done or ordered done, even the rock-throwing at the market this morning, had been of a caretaking nature. Barbara's friends on the outside would be especially prone to misunderstanding, because they would not want to understand. That Barbara had friends, powerful ones, on the outside was a thing Big Jim hadn't questioned since seeing that letter from the President. But for the time being they could do nothing. Which was the way Big Jim wanted it to stay for at least a couple of weeks. Maybe even a month or two.

  The truth was, he liked the Dome.

  Not for the long term, of course, but until the propane out there at the radio station was redistributed? Until the lab was dismantled and the supply barn that had housed it had been burned to the ground (another crime to be laid at the door of Dale Barbara's co-conspirators)? Until Barbar
a could be tried and executed by police firing squad? Until any blame for how things were done during the crisis could be spread around to as many people as possible, and the credit accrued to just one, namely himself?

  Until then, the Dome was just fine.

  Big Jim decided he'd get kneebound and pray on it before turning in.

  7

  Sammy limped down the hospital corridor, looking at the names on the doors and checking behind those with no names just to be sure. She was starting to worry that the bitch wasn't here when she came to the last one and saw a get-well card thumbtacked there. It showed a cartoon dog saying "I heard you weren't feeling so well."

  Sammy drew Jack Evans's gun from the waistband of her jeans (that waistband a little looser now, she'd finally managed to lose some weight, better late than never) and used the automatic's muzzle to open the card. On the inside, the cartoon dog was licking his balls and saying, "Need a hindlick maneuver?" It was signed Mel, Jim Jr., Carter, and Frank, and was exactly the sort of tasteful greeting Sammy would have expected of them.

  She pushed the door open with the barrel of the gun. Georgia wasn't alone. This did not disturb the deep calm that Sammy felt, the sense of peace nearly attained. It might have if the man sleeping in the corner had been an innocent--the bitch's father or uncle, say--but it was Frankie the Tit Grabber. The one who'd raped her first, telling her she'd better learn to keep her mouth for when she was on her knees. That he was sleeping didn't change anything. Because guys like him always woke up and recommenced their fuckery.

  Georgia wasn't asleep; she was in too much pain, and the longhair who'd come in to check her hadn't offered her any more dope. She saw Sammy, and her eyes widened. "D'yew," she said. "Ged outta here."

  Sammy smiled. "You sound like Homer Simpson," she said.

  Georgia saw the gun and her eyes widened. She opened her now mostly toothless mouth and screamed.

  Sammy continued to smile. The smile widened, in fact. The scream was music to her ears and balm to her hurts.

  "Do that bitch," she said. "Right, Georgia? Isn't that what you said, you heartless cunt?"