Under the Dome

  "You're sure?"

  "Yeah."

  "Her kids there with her?"

  "Yup. The hippy, too. The one who straightened out your ticker. Plus the two kids Junior and Frankie found out at the Pond." Carter thought about this. "With his chick dead and her husband gone, him and Everett'll probably be boinking each other's brains out by the end of the week. If you want me to take another run at her, boss, I will."

  Big Jim flicked a single finger up from the steering wheel to show that wouldn't be necessary. His attention was elsewhere. "Look at them, Carter."

  Carter couldn't very well help it. The foot traffic out of town was thickening every minute.

  "Most of them will be at the Dome by nine, and their cotton-picking relatives won't arrive until ten. At the earliest. By then they'll be good and thirsty. By noon the ones who didn't think to bring water will be drinking cow-piddle out of Alden Dinsmore's pond, God love them. God must love them, because the majority are too dumb to work and too nervous to steal."

  Carter barked laughter.

  "That's what we've got to deal with," Rennie said. "The mob. The cotton-picking rabble. What do they want, Carter?"

  "I don't know, boss."

  "Sure you do. They want food, Oprah, country music, and a warm bed to thump uglies in when the sun goes down. So they can make more just like them. And goodness me, here comes another member of the tribe."

  It was Chief Randolph, trudging up the hill and mopping his bright red face with a handkerchief.

  Big Jim was now in full lecture mode. "Our job, Carter, is to take care of them. We may not like it, we may not always think they're worth it, but it's the job God gave us. Only to do it, we have to take care of ourselves first, and that's why a good deal of fresh fruit and veg from Food City was stored in the Town Clerk's office two days ago. You didn't know that, did you? Well, that's all right. You're a step ahead of them and I'm a step ahead of you and that's how it's supposed to be. The lesson is simple: the Lord helps those that help themselves."

  "Yes, sir."

  Randolph arrived. He was puffing, there were circles under his eyes, and he appeared to have lost weight. Big Jim pushed the button that ran down his window.

  "Step in, Chief, grab yourself some AC." And when Randolph started for the front passenger seat, Big Jim added: "Not there, Carter's sitting there." He smiled. "Get in back."

  3

  It wasn't a police car that had pulled up behind the Odyssey van; it was the hospital ambulance. Dougie Twitchell was at the wheel. Ginny Tomlinson was in the passenger seat with a sleeping baby in her lap. The rear doors opened and Gina Buffalino got out. She was still in her candy-striper uniform. The girl who followed her, Harriet Bigelow, wore jeans and tee-shirt that said U.S. OLYMPIC KISSING TEAM.

  "What ... what ..." That seemed to be all Linda was capable of. Her heart was racing, the blood pounding so hard in her head that she seemed to feel her eardrums flapping.

  Twitch said, "Rusty called and told us to get out to the orchard at Black Ridge. I didn't even know there was an orchard up there, but Ginny did, and ... Linda? Honey, you're white as a ghost."

  "I'm okay," Linda said, and realized she was on the verge of fainting. She pinched her earlobes, a trick Rusty had taught her a long time ago. Like many of his folk-remedies (beating down wens with the spine of a heavy book was another), it worked. When she spoke again, her voice seemed both nearer and somehow realer. "He told you to come here first?"

  "Yes. To get some of that." He pointed to the lead roll sitting on the loading dock. "Just to be on the safe side is what he said. But I'll need those snips."

  "Uncle Twitch!" Janelle cried, and dashed into his arms.

  "What's up, Tiger Lily?" He hugged her, swung her, set her down. Janelle peered into the passenger window at the baby. "What's her name?"

  "It's a he," Ginny said. "His name's Little Walter."

  "Cool!"

  "Jannie, get back in the van, we have to go," Linda said.

  Thurse asked, "Who's minding the store, you guys?"

  Ginny looked embarrassed. "Nobody. But Rusty said not to worry, unless there was somebody in need of constant care. Other than Little Walter, there wasn't. So I grabbed the baby and we boogied. We might be able to go back later, Twitch says."

  "Somebody better be able to," Thurse said gloomily. Gloom, Linda had noticed, seemed to be Thurston Marshall's default position. "Three-quarters of the town is hoofing it out 119 to the Dome. The air quality's bad and it's going to be eighty-five by ten o'clock, which will be about the time the visitor buses arrive. If Rennie and his cohorts have done anything about providing shelter, I haven't heard of it. There's apt to be a lot of sick people in Chester's Mill before sundown. With luck, only heatstroke and asthma, but there could be a few heart attacks as well."

  "Guys, maybe we should go back," Gina said. "I feel like a rat deserting a sinking ship."

  "No!" Linda said so sharply that they all looked at her, even Audi. "Rusty said something bad is going to happen. It might not be today ... but he said it might be. Get your lead for the ambulance windows and go. I don't dare wait around. One of Rennie's thugs came to see me this morning, and if he swings by the house and sees the van's gone--"

  "Go on, go," Twitch said. "I'll back up so you can get out. Don't bother with Main Street, it's already a mess."

  "Main Street past the cop-shop?" Linda almost shuddered. "No thanks. Mom's taxi goes West Street up to Highland."

  Twitch got in behind the wheel of the ambulance and the two young nurse draftees got in back again, Gina giving Linda a final doubtful look over her shoulder.

  Linda paused, looking first at the sleeping, sweaty baby, then at Ginny. "Maybe you and Twitch can go back to the hospital tonight to see how things are there. Say you were on a call way the hell and gone out in Northchester, or something. Just, whatever you do, don't mention anything about Black Ridge."

  "No."

  Easy to say now, Linda thought. You might not find dummying up so easy if Carter Thibodeau bends you over a sink.

  She pushed Audrey back, shut the slider, and got behind the wheel of the Odyssey Green.

  "Let's get out of here," Thurse said, climbing in beside her. "I haven't been this paranoid since my off-the-pig days."

  "Good," she said. "Because perfect paranoia is perfect awareness."

  She backed her van around the ambulance and started up West Street.

  4

  "Jim," Randolph said from the backseat of the Hummer, "I've been thinking about this raid."

  "Have you, now. Why don't you give us the benefit of your thinking, Peter?"

  "I'm the Chief of Police. If it comes down to a choice between crowd control at Dinsmore's farm and leading a raid on a drug lab where there may be armed addicts guarding illegal substances ... well, I know where my duty lies. Let's just say that."

  Big Jim discovered he didn't want to argue the point. Arguing with fools was counterproductive. Randolph had no idea what sort of weapons might be stockpiled at the radio station. In truth, neither did Big Jim himself (there was no telling what Bushey might have put on the corporate tab), but at least he could imagine the worst, a mental feat of which this uniformed gasbag seemed incapable. And if something should happen to Randolph ... well, hadn't he already decided that Carter would be a more than adequate replacement?

  "All right, Pete," he said. "Far be it for me to stand between you and your duty. You're the new OIC, with Fred Denton as your second. That satisfy you?"

  "You're gosh-damn right it does!" Randolph puffed his chest. He looked like a fat rooster about to crow. Big Jim, although not renowned for his sense of humor, had to stifle a laugh.

  "Then get down there to the PD and start putting together your crew. Town trucks, remember."

  "Correct! We strike at noon!" He shook a fist in the air.

  "Go in through the woods."

  "Now, Jim, I wanted to talk to you about that. It seems a little complicated. Those woods behind the s
tation are pretty snarly ... there'll be poison ivy ... and poison oak, which is even w--"

  "There's an access road," Big Jim said. He was reaching the end of his patience. "I want you to use it. Hit them on their blind side."

  "But--"

  "A bullet in the head would be much worse than poison ivy. Nice talking to you, Pete. Glad to see you're so ..." But what was he so? Pompous? Ridiculous? Idiotic?

  "So totally gung-ho," Carter said.

  "Thank you, Carter, my thought exactly. Pete, tell Henry Morrison he's now in charge of crowd control out on 119. And use the access road. "

  "I really think--"

  "Carter, get the door for him."

  5

  "Oh my God," Linda said, and swerved the van to the left. It bumped up over the curb not a hundred yards from where Main and Highland intersected. All three girls laughed at the bump, but poor little Aidan only looked scared, and grabbed the longsuffering Audrey's head once more.

  "What?" Thurse snapped. "What?"

  She parked on someone's lawn, behind a tree. It was a good-sized oak, but the van was big, too, and the oak had lost most of its listless leaves. She wanted to believe they were hidden but couldn't.

  "That's Jim Rennie's Hummer sitting in the middle of the goddam intersection."

  "You swore big," Judy said. "Two quarters in the swear-jar." Thurse craned. "Are you sure?"

  "Do you think anybody else in town has a vehicle that humongous?"

  "Oh Jesus," Thurston said.

  "Swear-jar!" This time Judy and Jannie said it together.

  Linda felt her mouth dry up, and her tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Thibodeau was emerging from the Hummer's passenger side, and if he looked this way ...

  If he sees us, I'm going to run him down, she thought. The idea brought a certain perverse calm.

  Thibodeau opened the back door of the Hummer. Peter Randolph got out.

  "That man is picking his seat," Alice Appleton informed the company at large. "My mother says that means you're going to the movies."

  Thurston Marshall burst out laughing, and Linda, who would have said she didn't have a laugh anywhere in her, joined him. Soon they were all laughing, even Aidan, who certainly didn't know what they were laughing about. Linda wasn't sure she did, either.

  Randolph headed down the hill on foot, still yanking at the seat of his uniform trousers. There was no reason for it to be as funny, and that made it funnier.

  Not wanting to be left out, Audrey began to bark.

  6

  Somewhere a dog was barking.

  Big Jim heard it, but didn't bother turning around. Watching Peter Randolph stride down the hill suffused him with well-being.

  "Look at him picking his pants out of his butt," Carter remarked. "My father used to say that meant you were going to the movies."

  "The only place he's going is out to WCIK," Big Jim said, "and if he's bullheaded about making a frontal assault, it's likely to be the last place he ever goes. Let's go down to the Town Hall and watch this carnival on TV for awhile. When that becomes tiresome, I want you to find the hippy doctor and tell him if he tries to scoot off somewhere, we'll run him down and throw him in jail."

  "Yes, sir." This was duty he didn't mind. Maybe he could take another run at ex-officer Everett, this time get her pants off.

  Big Jim put the Hummer in gear and rolled slowly down the hill, honking at people who didn't get out of his way quickly enough.

  As soon as he had turned into the Town Hall driveway, the Odyssey van rolled through the intersection and headed out of town. There was no foot traffic on Upper Highland Street, and Linda accelerated rapidly. Thurse Marshall began singing "The Wheels on the Bus," and soon all the kids were singing with him.

  Linda, who felt a little more terror leave her with each tenth of a mile the odometer turned, soon began to sing along.

  7

  Visitors Day has come to Chester's Mill, and a mood of eager anticipation fills the people walking out Route 119 toward the Dinsmore farm, where Joe McClatchey's demonstration went so wrong just five days ago. They are hopeful (if not exactly happy) in spite of that memory--also in spite of the heat and smelly air. The horizon beyond the Dome now appears blurred, and above the trees, the sky has darkened, due to accumulated particulate matter. It's better when you look straight up, but still not right; the blue has a yellowish cast, like a film of cataract on an old man's eye.

  "It's how the sky used to look over the paper mills back in the seventies, when they were running full blast," says Henrietta Clavard--she of the not-quite-broken ass. She offers her bottle of ginger ale to Petra Searles, who's walking beside her.

  "No, thank you," Petra says, "I have some water."

  "Is it spiked with vodka?" Henrietta inquires. "Because this is. Half and half, sweetheart; I call it a Canada Dry Rocket."

  Petra takes the bottle and downs a healthy slug. "Yow!" she says.

  Henrietta nods in businesslike fashion. "Yes, ma'am. It's not fancy, but it does brighten up a person's day."

  Many of the pilgrims are carrying signs they plan on flashing to their visitors from the outside world (and to the cameras, of course) like the audience at a live network morning show. But network morning show signs are uniformly cheerful. Most of these are not. Some, left over from the previous Sunday's demo, read FIGHT THE POWER and LET US OUT, DAMMIT! There are new ones that say GOVERNMENT EXPERIMENT: WHY???, END THE COVER-UP, and WE'RE HUMAN BEINGS, NOT GUINEA PIGS. Johnny Carver's reads STOP WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING IN THE NAME OF GOD! BEFORE IT'S 2-LATE!! Frieda Morrison's asks--ungrammatically but passionately--WHO'S CRIMES ARE WE DYING FOR? Bruce Yardley's is the only one to strike a completely positive note. Attached to a seven-foot stick and wrapped in blue crepe paper (at the Dome it will tower over all the others), it reads HELLO MOM & DAD IN CLEVELAND! LOVE YOU GUYS!

  Nine or ten signs feature scriptural references. Bonnie Morrell, wife of the town's lumberyard owner, carries one that proclaims DON'T FORGIVE THEM, BECAUSE THEY DO KNOW WHAT THEY DO! Trina Cole's says THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD below a drawing of what is probably a sheep, although it's tough to be sure.

  Donnie Baribeau's simply reads PRAY FOR US.

  Marta Edmunds, who sometimes babysits for the Everetts, isn't among the pilgrims. Her ex-husband lives in South Portland, but she doubts if he'll show up, and what would she say if he did? You're behind on the alimony, cocksucker? She goes out Little Bitch Road instead of down Route 119. The advantage is that she doesn't have to walk. She takes her Acura (and runs the air-conditioning full blast). Her destination is the cozy little house where Clayton Brassey has spent his declining years. He is her great-great uncle once removed (or some damn thing), and while she isn't quite sure of either their kinship or degree of separation, she knows he has a generator. If it's still working, she can watch on TV. She also wants to assure herself that Uncle Clayt's still okay--or as okay as it's possible to be when you're a hundred and five and your brains have turned to Quaker Oatmeal.

  He's not okay. Clayton Brassey has given up the mantel of oldest living town resident. He's sitting in the living room in his favorite chair with his chipped enamel urinal in his lap and the Boston Post Cane leaning against the wall nearby, and he's cold as a cracker. There's no sign of Nell Toomey, his great-great granddaughter and chief caregiver; she's gone out to the Dome with her brother and sister-in-law.

  Marta says, "Oh, Unc--I'm sorry, but probably it was time."

  She goes into the bedroom, gets a fresh sheet from the closet, and tosses it over the old man. The result makes him look a bit like a covered piece of furniture in an abandoned house. A highboy, perhaps. Marta can hear the gennie putting away out back and thinks what the hell. She turns on the TV, tunes it to CNN, and sits on the couch. What's unfolding on-screen almost makes her forget she's keeping company with a corpse.

  It's an aerial shot, taken with a powerful distance lens from a helicopter hovering above the Motton flea market where the visitor buses will park.
The early starters inside the Dome have already arrived. Behind them comes the haj : two-lane blacktop filled from side to side and stretching all the way back to Food City. The similarity of the town's citizens to trekking ants is unmistakable.

  Some newscaster is blabbing away, using words like wonderful and amazing. The second time he says I have never seen anything like this, Marta mutes the sound, thinking Nobody has, you dummocks. She is thinking about getting up and seeing what there might be in the kitchen to snack on (maybe that's wrong with a corpse in the room, but she's hungry, dammit), when the picture goes to a split screen. On the left half, another helicopter is now tracking the line of buses heading out of Castle Rock, and the super at the bottom of the screen reads VISITORS TO ARRIVE SHORTLY AFTER 10 AM.

  There's time to fix a little something, after all. Marta finds crackers, peanut butter, and--best of all--three cold bottles of Bud. She takes everything back into the living room on a tray and settles in. "Thanks, Unc," she says.

  Even with the sound off (especially with the sound off), the juxtaposed images are riveting, hypnotic. As the first beer hits her (joyously!), Marta realizes it's like waiting for an irresistible force to meet an immovable object, and wondering if there will be an explosion when they come together.

  Not far from the gathering crowd, on the knoll where he has been digging his father's grave, Ollie Dinsmore leans on his spade and watches the crowd arrive: two hundred, then four, then eight. Eight hundred at least. He sees a woman with a baby on her back in one of those Papoose carriers, and wonders if she's insane, bringing a kid that small out in this heat, without even a hat to protect its head. The arriving townsfolk stand in the hazy sun, watching and waiting anxiously for the buses. Ollie thinks what a slow, sad walk they are going to have once the hoopla's over. All the way back to town in the simmering late-afternoon heat. Then he turns once more to the job at hand.

  Behind the growing crowd, on both shoulders of 119, the police--a dozen mostly new officers led by Henry Morrison--park with their flashers throbbing. The last two police cars are late arriving, because Henry ordered them to fill their trunks with containers of water from the spigot at the Fire Department, where, he has discovered, the generator is not only working but looks good to go for another couple of weeks. There's nowhere near enough water--a foolishly meager amount, in fact, given the size of the crowd--but it's the best they can do. They'll save it for the folks who faint in the sun. Henry hopes there won't be many, but he knows there will be some, and he curses Jim Rennie for the lack of preparation. He knows it's because Rennie doesn't give a damn, and to Henry's mind that makes the negligence worse.