Under the Dome: A Novel (119 page)

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.

He has ridden out with Pamela Chen, the only one of the new “special deputies” he completely trusts, and when he sees the size of the crowd, he tells her to call the hospital. He wants the ambulance out here, standing by. She comes back five minutes later with news Henry finds both incredible and completely unsurprising. One of the patients answered the phone at reception, Pamela says—a young woman who came in early this morning with a broken wrist. She says all the medical personnel are gone, and the ambulance is gone, too.

“Well that’s just great,” Henry says. “I hope your first aid skills are up to snuff, Pammie, because you may have to use them.”

“I can give CPR,” she says.

“Good.” He points to Joe Boxer, the Eggo-loving dentist. Boxer is wearing a blue armband and self-importantly waving people to either side of the road (most pay no attention). “And if someone gets a toothache, that self-important prick can pull it for them.”

“If they’ve got the cash to pay,” Pamela says. She has had experience of Joe Boxer, when her wisdom teeth came in. He said something about “trading one service for another” while eying her breasts in a way she didn’t care for at all.

“I think there’s a Red Sox hat in the back of my car,” Henry says. “If so, would you take it over there?” He points to the woman
Ollie has already noticed, the one with the bareheaded baby. “Put it on the kid and tell that woman she’s an idiot.”

“I’ll take the hat but I won’t tell her any such thing,” Pamela says quietly. “That’s Mary Lou Costas. She’s seventeen, she’s been married for a year to a trucker who’s almost twice her age, and she’s probably hoping he comes to see her.”

Henry sighs. “She’s still an idiot, but I guess at seventeen we all are.”

And still they come. One man appears to have no water, but he
is
carrying a large boombox that’s blaring WCIK gospel. Two of his friends are unfurling a banner. The words on it are flanked by gigantic, clumsily drawn Q-Tips. PLEASE RES-Q US, the sign reads.

“This is going to be bad,” Henry says, and of course he is right, but he has no idea how bad.

The growing crowd waits in the sun. The ones with weak bladders wander into the underbrush west of the road to pee. Most get scratched up before finding relief. One overweight woman (Mabel Alston; she also suffers from what she calls the dia-betties) sprains her ankle and lies there hollering until a couple of men come over and get her on remaining good foot. Lennie Meechum, the town postmaster (at least until this week, when delivery of the U.S. mail was canceled for the foreseeable future), borrows a cane for her. Then he tells Henry that Mabel needs a ride back to town. Henry says he can’t spare a car. She’ll have to rest in the shade, he says.

Lennie waves his arms at both sides of the road. “In case you didn’t notice, it’s cow-pasture on one side and brambles on the other. No shade to speak of.”

Henry points to the Dinsmore dairy barn. “Plenty of shade there.”

“It’s a quarter of a mile away!” Lennie says indignantly.

It’s an eighth of a mile at most, but Henry doesn’t argue. “Put her in the front seat of my car.”

“Awful hot in the sun,” Lennie says. “She’ll need the fac’try air.”

Yes, Henry knows she’ll need the air-conditioning, which means running the motor, which means burning gasoline. There’s no shortage of that right now—assuming they can pump it out of the
tanks at the Gas & Grocery, that is—and he supposes they’ll have to worry about later later.

“Key’s in the ignition,” he says. “Turn it to low cool, do you understand?”

Lennie says he does and heads back to Mabel, but Mabel’s not ready to move, although sweat is pouring down her cheeks and her face is bright red. “I didn’t go yet!” she bawls. “I got to
go
!”

Leo Lamoine, one of the new officers, strolls up to Henry. This is company Henry could do without; Leo has the brain of a turnip. “How’d she get out here, sport?” he asks. Leo Lamoine is the kind of man who calls everyone “sport.”

“I don’t know, but she did,” Henry says wearily. He’s getting a headache. “Round up some women to take her behind my police car and hold her up while she piddles.”

“Which ones, sport?”

“Big ones,” Henry says, and walks away before the sudden strong urge to punch Leo Lamoine in the nose can overpower him.

“What kind of police force is this?” a woman asks as she and four others escort Mabel to the rear of unit Three, where Mabel will pee while holding onto the bumper, the others standing in front of her for modesty’s sake.

Thanks to Rennie and Randolph, your fearless leaders, the unprepared kind,
Henry would like to reply, but he doesn’t. He knows his mouth got him into trouble the night before, when he spoke in favor of Andrea Grinnell’s being heard. What he says is: “The only one you’ve got.”

To be fair, most people are, like Mabel’s female honor guard, more than willing to help one another. Those who have remembered to bring water share it with those who did not, and most drink sparingly. There are idiots in every crowd, though, and those in this one pig the water freely and without thought. Some folks munch cookies and crackers that will leave them thirstier later on. Mary Lou Costas’s baby begins to cry fretfully beneath the Red Sox cap, which is much too big for her. Mary Lou has brought a bottle of water, and
she now begins to dab the baby’s overheated cheeks and neck with it. Soon the bottle will be empty.

Henry grabs Pamela Chen and again points to Mary Lou. “Take that bottle and fill it from what we brought,” he says. “Try not to let too many people see you, or it’ll all be gone before noon.”

She does as told, and Henry thinks,
There’s one at least who might actually make a good smalltown cop, if she ever wanted the job.

Nobody bothers to watch where Pamela is going. That’s good. When the buses come, these folks will forget all about being hot and thirsty, for a while. Of course, after the visitors go … and with a long walk back to town staring them in the face …

An idea hits him. Henry scopes out his “officers” and sees a lot of dumbbells but few people he trusts; Randolph has taken most of the halfway decent ones on some sort of secret mission. Henry thinks it has to do with the drug operation Andrea accused Rennie of running, but he doesn’t care what it is. All he knows is that they aren’t here and he can’t run this errand himself.

But he knows who could, and hails him over.

“What do you want, Henry?” Bill Allnut asks.

“Have you got your keys to the school?”

Allnut, who’s been the Middle School janitor for thirty years, nods. “Right here.” The key ring hanging from his belt glitters in the hazy sun. “Always carry em, why?”

“Take unit Four,” Henry says. “Go back to town as fast as you can without running over any latecomers. Get one of the schoolbuses and bring it out here. One of the forty-four seaters.”

Allnut doesn’t look pleased. His jaw sets in a Yankee way Henry—a Yankee himself—has seen all his life, knows well, and hates. It’s a penurious look that says
I gutta take care of m’self, chummy.
“You can’t get all these people in one schoolbus, are you nuts?”

“Not all,” Henry says, “just the ones who won’t be able to make it back on their own.” He’s thinking of Mabel and the Corso girl’s overheated baby, but of course by three this afternoon there will be more who can’t walk all the way back to town. Or maybe at all.

Bill Allnut’s jaw sets even more firmly; now his chin is sticking out like the prow of a ship. “Nossir. My two sons and their wives are coming, they said so. They’re bringing their kids. I don’t want to miss em. And I ain’t leaving m’wife. She’s all upset.”

Henry would like to shake the man for his stupidity (and outright throttle him for his selfishness). Instead he demands Allnut’s keys and asks to be shown which one opens the motor pool. Then he tells Allnut to go back to his wife.

“I’m sorry, Henry,” Allnut says, “but I gut to see m’kids n grand-kids. I deserve to. I didn’t ask the lame, the halt, n the blind to come out here, and I shouldn’t have to pay for their stupidity.”

“Ayup, you’re a fine American, no question about that,” Henry says. “Get out of my sight.”

Allnut opens his mouth to protest, thinks better of it (perhaps it’s something he sees on Officer Morrison’s face), and shuffles away. Henry yells for Pamela, who does not protest when told she’s to go back to town, only asks where, what, and why. Henry tells her.

“Okay, but … are those schoolbuses standard shift? Because I can’t drive a standard.”

Henry shouts the question to Allnut, who is standing at the Dome with his wife Sarah, both of them eagerly scanning the empty highway on the other side of the Motton town line.

“Number Sixteen is a standard!” Allnut shouts back. “All the rest are automatics! And tell her to mind the interlock! Them buses won’t start unless the driver fastens his seatbelt!”

Henry sends Pamela on her way, telling her to hurry as much as prudence will allow. He wants that bus ASAP.

At first the people at the Dome stand, anxiously watching the empty road. Then most of them sit down. Those who have brought blankets spread them. Some shade their heads from the hazy sun with their signs. Conversation lags, and Wendy Goldstone can be heard quite clearly when she asks her friend Ellen where the crickets are—there’s no singing in the high grass. “Or have I gone deaf?” she asks.

She hasn’t. The crickets are either silent or dead.

In the WCIK studio, the airy (and comfortably cool) center space resounds to the voice of Ernie “The Barrel” Kellogg and His Delight Trio rocking out on “I Got a Telephone Call from Heaven and It Was Jesus on the Line.” The two men aren’t listening; they’re watching the TV, as transfixed by the split-screen images as Marta Edmunds (who’s on her second Bud and has forgotten all about the corpse of old Clayton Brassey under the sheet). As transfixed as everyone in America, and—yes—the world beyond.

“Look at them, Sanders,” Chef breathes.

“I am,” Andy says. He’s got CLAUDETTE on his lap. Chef has offered him a couple of hand grenades as well, but this time Andy has declined. He’s afraid he might pull the pin on one and then freeze. He saw that in a movie once. “It’s amazing, but don’t you think we better get ready for our company?”

Chef knows Andy’s right, but it’s hard to look away from the side of the screen where the copter is tracking the buses and the large video truck that leads the parade. He knows every landmark they’re passing; they are recognizable even from above. The visitors are getting close now.

We’re all getting close now,
he thinks.

“Sanders!”

“What, Chef?”

Chef hands him a Sucrets tin. “The rock will not hide them; the dead tree gives no shelter, nor the cricket relief. Just which book that’s in slips my mind.”