"If she'd told me, I would have told Randolph," she panted. "Do you think I'd risk Rusty getting hurt when he didn't do anything?"
"He did plenty. Threatened to withhold medicine from the boss unless he stepped down. Fucking blackmail. I heard it." He jerked her arm again. A little moan escaped her. "Got anything to say about that? Mom? "
"Maybe he did. I haven't seen him or talked to him, so how would I know? But he's still the closest thing this town has to a doctor. Rennie never would have executed him. Barbara, maybe, but not Rusty. I knew it, and you must know it, too. Now let me go."
For a moment he almost did. It all hung together. Then he had a better idea, and marched her to the sink. "Bend over, Mom."
"No!"
He jerked her arm up again. It felt like the ball of her shoulder was going to tear right out of its socket. "Bend over. Like you're going to wash that pretty blond hair."
"Linda?" Thurston called. "How are you doing?"
Jesus, don't let him ask about the groceries. Please, Jesus.
And then another thought struck her: Where were the kids' suitcases? Each of the girls had packed a little traveling case. What if they were sitting in the living room?
"Tell him you're fine," Carter said. "We don't want to bring the hippie into this. Or the kids. Do we?"
God, no. But where were their suitcases?
"Fine!" she called.
"Almost finished?" he called.
Oh, Thurse, shut up!
"I need five minutes!"
Thurston stood there looking like he might say something else, but then went back to pushing the girls.
"Good job." He was pressing against her now, and he had a hardon. She could feel it against the seat of her jeans. It felt as big as a monkey wrench. Then he pulled away. "Almost finished with what?"
She almost said making breakfast, but the used bowls were in the sink. For a moment her mind was a roaring blank and she almost wished he'd put his damn boner on her again, because when men were occupied with their little heads, their big ones switched to a test pattern.
But he jerked her arm up again. "Talk to me, Mom. Make Dad happy."
"Cookies!" she gasped. "I said I'd make cookies. The kids asked!"
"Cookies with no power," he mused. "Best trick of the week."
"They're the no-bake kind! Look in the pantry, you son of a bitch!" If he looked, he would indeed find no-bake oatmeal cookie mix on the shelf. But of course if he looked down, he would also see the supplies she had packed. And he might well do that, if he registered how many of the pantry shelves were now half or wholly empty.
"You don't know where he is." The erection was back against her. With the throbbing pain in her shoulder, she hardly registered it. "You're sure about that."
"Yes. I thought you knew. I thought you came to tell me he was hurt or d-d--"
"I think you're lying your pretty round ass off." Her arm jerked up higher, and now the pain was excruciating, the need to cry out unbearable. But somehow she did bear it. "I think you know plenty, Mom. And if you don't tell me, I'm going to rip your arm right out of its socket. Last chance. Where is he?"
Linda resigned herself to having her arm or shoulder broken. Maybe both. The question was whether or not she could keep from screaming, which would bring the Js and Thurston on the run. Head down, hair dangling in the sink, she said: "Up my ass. Why don't you kiss it, motherfucker? Maybe he'll pop out and say hi."
Instead of breaking her arm, Carter laughed. That was a good one, actually. And he believed her. She would never dare to talk to him like that unless she was telling the truth. He only wished she wasn't wearing Levi's. Fucking her probably still would have been out of the question, but he certainly could have gotten a good deal closer to it if she'd been in a skirt. Still, a dry hump wasn't the worst way to start Visitors Day, even if it was against a pair of jeans instead of some nice soft panties.
"Hold still and keep your mouth shut," he said. "If you can do that, you may get out of this in one piece."
She heard the jingle of his belt-buckle and the rasp of his zipper. Then what had been rubbing against her was rubbing again, only now with a lot less cloth between them. Some faint part of her was glad that at least she'd put on a fairly new pair of jeans; she could hope he'd give himself a nasty rug rash.
Just as long as the Js don't come in and see me like this.
Suddenly he pressed tighter and harder. The hand not holding her arm groped her breast. "Hey, Mom," he murmured. "Hey-hey, my-my." She felt him spasm, although not the wetness that followed such spasms as day follows night; the jeans were too thick for that, thank God. A moment later the upward pressure on her arm finally loosened. She could have cried with relief but didn't. Wouldn't. She turned around. He was buckling his belt again.
"Might want to change those jeans before you go making any cookies. At least, I would if I were you." He shrugged. "But who knows--maybe you like it. Different strokes for different folks."
"Is this how you keep the law around here now? Is this how your boss wants the law kept?"
"He's more of a big-picture man." Carter turned to the pantry, and her racing heart seemed to stop. Then he glanced at his watch and yanked up his zipper. "You call Mr. Rennie or me if your husband gets in touch. It's the best thing to do, believe me. If you don't, and I find out, the next load I shoot is going straight up the old wazoo. Whether the kids are watching or not. I don't mind an audience."
"Get out of here before they come in."
"Say please, Mom."
Her throat worked, but she knew Thurston would soon be checking on her, and she got it out. "Please."
He headed for the door, then looked into the living room and stopped. He had seen the little suitcases. She was sure of it.
But something else was on his mind.
"And turn in the bubble light I saw in your van. In case you forgot, you're fired."
19
She was upstairs when Thurston and the kids came in three minutes later. The first thing she did was look in the kids' room. The traveling cases were on their beds. Judy's teddy was sticking out of one.
"Hey, kids!" she called down gaily. Toujours gai, that was her. "Look at some picture-books, and I'll be down in a few!"
Thurston came to the foot of the stairs. "We really ought to--"
He saw her face and stopped. She beckoned him.
"Mom?" Janelle called. "Can we have the last Pepsi if I share it out?"
Although she ordinarily would have vetoed the idea of soda this early, she said: "Go ahead, but don't spill!"
Thurse came halfway up the stairs. "What happened?"
"Keep your voice down. There was a cop. Carter Thibodeau."
"The big tall one with the broad shoulders?"
"That's him. He came to question me--"
Thurse paled, and Linda knew he was replaying what he'd called to her when he thought she was alone.
"I think we're okay," she said, "but I need you to make sure he's really gone. He was walking. Check the street and over the back fence into the Edmundses' yard. I have to change my pants."
"What did he do to you?"
"Nothing!" she hissed. "Just check to make sure he's gone, and if he is, we are getting the holy hell out of here."
20
Piper Libby let go of the box and sat back, looking at the town with tears welling in her eyes. She was thinking of all those late-night prayers to The Not-There. Now she knew that had been nothing but a silly, sophomoric joke, and the joke, it turned out, was on her. There was a There there. It just wasn't God.
"Did you see them?"
She started. Norrie Calvert was standing there. She looked thinner. Older, too, and Piper saw that she was going to be beautiful. To the boys she hung with, she probably already was.
"Yes, honey, I did."
"Are Rusty and Barbie right? Are the people looking at us just kids?"
Piper thought, Maybe it takes one to know one.
"I'm not a hun
dred percent sure, honey. Try it for yourself." Norrie looked at her. "Yeah?"
And Piper--not knowing if she was doing right or doing wrong--nodded. "Yeah."
"If I get ... I don't know ... weird or something, will you pull me back?"
"Yes. And you don't have to if you don't want to. It's not a dare."
But to Norrie it was. And she was curious. She knelt in the high grass and gripped the box firmly on either side. She was immediately galvanized. Her head snapped back so hard Piper heard the verte-brae in her neck crack like knuckles. She reached for the girl, then dropped her hand as Norrie relaxed. Her chin went to her breast-bone and her eyes, which had squeezed shut when the shock hit her, opened again. They were distant and hazy.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked. "Why?"
Piper's arms broke out in gooseflesh.
"Tell me!" A tear fell from one of Norrie's eyes and struck the top of the box, where it sizzled and then disappeared. "Tell me!"
Silence spun out. It seemed very long. Then the girl let go and rocked backward until her butt sat on her heels. "Kids."
"For sure?"
"For sure. I couldn't tell how many. It kept changing. They have leather hats on. They have bad mouths. They were wearing goggles and looking at their own box. Only theirs is like a television. They see everywhere, all over town."
"How do you know?"
Norrie shook her head helplessly. "I can't tell you, but I know it's true. They're bad kids with bad mouths. I never want to touch that box again. I feel so dirty. " She began to cry.
Piper held her. "When you asked them why, what did they say?"
"Nothing."
"Did they hear you, do you think?"
"They heard. They just didn't care."
From behind them came a steady beating sound, growing louder. Two transport helicopters were coming in from the north, almost skimming the TR-90 treetops.
"They better watch out for the Dome or they'll crash like the airplane!" Norrie cried.
The copters did not crash. They reached the edge of safe airspace some two miles distant, then began to descend.
21
Cox had told Barbie of an old supply road that ran from the McCoy orchard to the TR-90 border, and said it still looked passable. Barbie, Rusty, Rommie, Julia, and Pete Freeman drove along it around seven thirty Friday morning. Barbie trusted Cox, but not necessarily pictures of an old truck-track snapped from two hundred miles up, so they'd taken the van Ernie Calvert had stolen from Big Jim Rennie's lot. That one Barbie was perfectly willing to lose, if it got stuck. Pete was sans camera; his digital Nikon had ceased to work when he got close to the box.
"ETs don't like the paparazzi, broha," Barbie said. He thought it was a moderately funny line, but when it came to his camera, Pete had no sense of humor.
The ex-phone company van made it to the Dome, and now the five of them watched as the two huge CH-47s waddled toward an overgrown hayfield on the TR-90 side. The road continued over there, and the Chinooks' rotors churned dust up in great clouds. Barbie and the others shielded their eyes, but that was only instinct, and unnecessary; the dust billowed as far as the Dome and then rolled off to either side.
The choppers alit with the slow decorum of overweight ladies settling into theater seats a tad too small for their bottoms. Barbie heard the hellish screeee of metal on a protruding rock, and the copter to the left lumbered thirty yards sideways before trying again.
A figure jumped from the open bay of the first one and strode through the cloud of disturbed grit, waving it impatiently aside. Barbie would have known that no-nonsense little fireplug anywhere. Cox slowed as he approached, and put out one hand like a blindman feeling for obstructions in the dark. Then he was wiping away the dust on his side.
"It's good to see you breathing free air, Colonel Barbara."
"Yes, sir."
Cox shifted his gaze. "Hello, Ms. Shumway. Hello, you other Friends of Barbara. I want to hear everything, but it will have to be quick--I've got a little dog-and-pony show going on across town, and I want to be there for it."
Cox jerked a thumb over his shoulder where the unloading had already begun: dozens of Air Max fans with attached generators. They were big ones, Barbie saw with relief, the kind used for drying tennis courts and racetrack pit areas after heavy rains. Each was bolted to its own two-wheeled dolly-platform. The gennies looked twenty-horsepower at most. He hoped that would be enough.
"First, I want you to tell me those aren't going to be necessary."
"I don't know for sure," Barbie said, "but I'm afraid they might be. You may want to get some more on the 119 side, where the townspeople are meeting their relatives."
"By tonight," Cox said. "That's the best we can do."
"Take some of these," Rusty said. "If we need them all, we'll be in extremely deep shit, anyway."
"Can't happen, son. Maybe if we could cut across Chester's Mill airspace, but if we could do that, there wouldn't be a problem, would there? And putting a line of generator-powered industrial fans where the visitors are going to be kind of defeats the purpose. Nobody would be able to hear anything. Those babies are loud. " He glanced at his watch. "Now how much can you tell me in fifteen minutes?"
HALLOWEEN COMES EARLY
1
At quarter to eight, Linda Everett's almost-new Honda Odyssey Green rolled up to the loading dock behind Burpee's Department Store. Thurse was riding shotgun. The kids (far too silent for children setting off on an adventure) were in the backseat. Aidan was hugging Audrey's head. Audi, probably sensing the little boy's distress, bore this patiently.
Linda's shoulder was still throbbing in spite of three aspirin, and she couldn't get Carter Thibodeau's face out of her mind. Or his smell: a mixture of sweat and cologne. She kept expecting him to pull up behind her in one of the town police cars, blocking their retreat. The next load I shoot is going straight up the old wazoo. Whether the kids are watching or not.
He'd do it, too. He would. And while she couldn't get all the way out of town, she was wild to put as much distance between herself and Rennie's new Man Friday as possible.
"Grab a whole roll, and the metal-snips," she told Thurse. "They're under that milk box. Rusty told me."
Thurston had opened the door, but now he paused. "I can't do that. What if somebody else needs them?"
She wasn't going to argue; she'd probably wind up screaming at him and scaring the children.
"Whatever. Just hurry up. This is like a box canyon."
"As fast as I can."
Yet it seemed to take him forever to snip pieces of the lead roll, and she had to restrain herself from leaning out the window and asking if he had been born a prissy old lady or just grew into one.
Keep it shut. He lost someone he loved last night.
Yes, and if they didn't hurry, she might lose everything. There were already people on Main Street, heading out toward 119 and the Dinsmore dairy farm, intent on getting the best places. Linda jumped every time a police loudspeaker blared, "CARS ARE NOT ALLOWED ON THE HIGHWAY! UNLESS YOU ARE PHYSICALLY DISABLED, YOU MUST WALK."
Thibodeau was smart, and he had sniffed something. What if he came back and saw that her van was gone? Would he look for it? Meanwhile, Thurse just kept snipping pieces of lead from the roofing roll. He turned and she thought he was done, but he was only visually measuring the windshield. He started cutting again. Whacking off another piece. Maybe he was actually trying to drive her mad. A silly idea, but once it had entered her mind it wouldn't leave.
She could still feel Thibodeau rubbing against her bottom. The tickle of his stubble. The fingers squeezing her breast. She told herself not to look at what he'd left on the seat of her jeans when she took them off, but she couldn't help it. The word that rose in her mind was mansplat, and she'd found herself in a short, grim struggle to keep her breakfast down. Which also would have pleased him, if he had known.
Sweat sprang out on her brow.
"Mom?" Judy, right in her e
ar. Linda jumped and uttered a cry. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to jump you. Can I have something to eat?"
"Not now."
"Why does that man keep loudspeakering?"
"Honey, I can't talk to you right now."
"Are you bummin?"
"Yes. A little. Now sit back."
"Are we going to see Daddy?"
"Yes." Unless we get caught and I get raped in front of you. "Now sit back."
Thurse was finally coming. Thank God for small favors. He appeared to be carrying enough cut squares and rectangles of lead to armor a tank. "See? That wasn't so ba--oh, shit."
The kids giggled, the sound like rough files sawing away at Linda's brain. "Quarter in the swear-jar, Mr. Marshall," Janelle said.
Thurse was looking down, bemused. He had stuck the metal-snips in his belt.
"I'll just put these back under the milk box--"
Linda snatched them before he could finish, restrained a momentary urge to bury them up to the handles in his narrow chest--admirable restraint, she thought--and got out to put them away herself.
As she did, a vehicle slid in behind the van, blocking access to West Street, the only way out of this cul-de-sac.
2
Atop Town Common Hill, just below the Y-intersection where Highland Avenue split off from Main Street, Jim Rennie's Hummer sat idling. From below came the amplified exhortations for people to leave their cars and walk unless they were disabled. People were flowing down the sidewalks, many with packs on their backs. Big Jim eyed them with that species of longsuffering contempt which is felt only by caretakers who do their jobs not out of love but out of duty.
Going against the tide was Carter Thibodeau. He was striding in the middle of the street, every now and then shoving someone out of his way. He reached the Hummer, got in on the passenger side, and armed sweat from his forehead. "Man, that AC feels good. Not hardly eight in the morning and it's got to be seventy-five degrees out there already. And the air smells like a frickin ashtray. 'Scuse the language, boss."
"What kind of luck did you have?"
"The bad kind. I talked to Officer Everett. Ex -Officer Everett. The others are in the breeze."
"Does she know anything?"
"No. She hasn't heard from the doc. And Wettington treated her like a mushroom, kept her in the dark and fed her shit."