Under the Dome: A Novel (17 page)

He was interrupted by two reports that sounded like gunfire.
They all jumped. Then a third came, and Rennie, who had worked with motors for most of his life, realized what it was.

“Relax, folks. Just a backfire. Generator clearing its throa—”

The elderly gennie backfired a fourth time, then died. The lights went out, leaving them for a moment in stygian blackness. Andrea shrieked.

On his left, Andy Sanders said: “Oh my gosh, Jim, the propane—”

Rennie reached out with his free hand and grabbed Andy’s arm. Andy shut up. As Rennie was relaxing his grip, light crept back into the long pine-paneled room. Not the bright overheads but the emergency box-lights mounted in the four corners. In their weak glow, the faces clustered at the conference table’s north end looked yellow and years older. They looked frightened. Even Big Jim Rennie looked frightened.

“No problem,” Randolph said with a cheeriness that sounded manufactured rather than organic. “Tank just ran dry, that’s all. Plenty more in the town supply barn.”

Andy shot Big Jim a look. It was no more than a shifting of the eyes, but Rennie had an idea Andrea saw it. What she might eventually make of it was another question.

She’ll forget it after her next dose of Oxy,
he told himself.
By morning for sure.

And in the meantime, the town’s supplies of propane—or lack thereof—didn’t concern him much. He would take care of that situation when it became necessary.

“Okay, folks, I know you’re as anxious to get out of here as I am, so let’s move on to our next order of business. I think we should officially confirm Pete here as our Chief of Police pro tem.”

“Yes, why not?” Andy asked. He sounded tired.

“If there’s no discussion,” Big Jim said, “I’ll call the question.”

They voted as he wanted them to vote.

They always did.

7

Junior was sitting on the front step of the big Rennie home on Mill Street when the lights of his father’s Hummer splashed up the driveway. Junior was at peace. The headache had not returned. Angie and Dodee were stored in the McCain pantry, where they would be fine—at least for a while. The money he’d taken was back in his father’s safe. There was a gun in his pocket—the pearl-grip.38 his father had given him for his eighteenth birthday. Now he and his father would speak. Junior would listen very closely to what the King of No Money Down had to say. If he sensed his father knew what he, Junior, had done—he didn’t see how that was possible, but his father knew so much—then Junior would kill him. After that he would turn the gun on himself. Because there would be no running away, not tonight. Probably not tomorrow, either. On his way back, he had stopped on the town common and listened to the conversations going on there. What they were saying was insane, but the large bubble of light to the south—and the smaller one to the southwest, where 117 ran toward Castle Rock—suggested that tonight, insanity just happened to be the truth.

The door of the Hummer opened, chunked closed. His father walked toward him, his briefcase banging one thigh. He didn’t look suspicious, wary, or angry. He sat down beside Junior on the step without a word. Then, in a gesture that took Junior completely by surprise, he put a hand on the younger man’s neck and squeezed gently.

“You heard?” he asked.

“Some,” Junior said. “I don’t understand it, though.”

“None of us do. I think there are going to be some hard days ahead while this gets sorted out. So I have to ask you something.”

“What’s that?” Junior’s hand closed around the butt of the pistol.

“Will you play your part? You and your friends? Frankie? Carter and the Searles boy?”

Junior was silent, waiting. What was
this
shit?

“Peter Randolph’s acting chief now. He’s going to need some men to fill out the police roster. Good men. Are you willing to serve as a deputy until this damn clustermug is over?”

Junior felt a wild urge to scream with laughter. Or triumph. Or both. Big Jim’s hand was still on the nape of his neck. Not squeezing. Not pinching. Almost … caressing.

Junior took his hand off the gun in his pocket. It occurred to him that he was
still
on a roll—the roll of all rolls.

Today he had killed two girls he’d known since childhood.

Tomorrow he was going to be a town cop.

“Sure, Dad,” he said. “If you need us, we are
there.
” And for the first time in maybe four years (it could have been longer), he kissed his father’s cheek.

1

Barbie and Julia Shumway didn’t talk much; there wasn’t much to say. Theirs was, as far as Barbie could see, the only car on the road, but lights streamed from most of the farmhouse windows once they cleared town. Out here, where there were always chores to be done and no one fully trusted Western Maine Power, almost everyone had a gennie. When they passed the WCIK radio tower, the two red lights at the top were flashing as they always did. The electric cross in front of the little studio building was also lit, a gleaming white beacon in the dark. Above it, the stars spilled across the sky in their usual extravagant profusion, a never-ending cataract of energy that needed no generator to power it.

“Used to come fishing out this way,” Barbie said. “It’s peaceful.”

“Any luck?”

“Plenty, but sometimes the air smells like the dirty underwear of the gods. Fertilizer, or something. I never dared to eat what I caught.”

“Not fertilizer—bullshit. Also known as the smell of self-righteousness.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She pointed at a dark steeple-shape blocking out the stars. “Christ the Holy Redeemer Church,” she said. “They own WCIK just back the road. Sometimes known as Jesus Radio?”

He shrugged. “I guess maybe I have seen the steeple. And I know the station. Can’t very well miss it if you live around here and own a radio. Fundamentalist?”

“They make the hardshell Baptists look soft. I go to the Congo, myself. Can’t stand Lester Coggins, hate all the ha-ha-you’re-going-to-hell-and-we’re-not stuff. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Although I
have
often wondered how they afford a fifty thousand-watt radio station.”

“Love offerings?”

She snorted. “Maybe I ought to ask Jim Rennie. He’s a deacon.”

Julia drove a trim Prius Hybrid, a car Barbie would not have expected of a staunch Republican newspaper owner (although he supposed it did fit a worshipper at the First Congregational). But it was quiet, and the radio worked. The only problem was that out here on the western side of town, CIK’s signal was so powerful it wiped out everything on the FM band. And tonight it was broadcasting some holy accordion shit that hurt Barbie’s head. It sounded like polka music played by an orchestra dying of bubonic plague.

“Try the AM band, why don’t you?” she said.

He did, and got only nighttime gabble until he hit a sports station near the bottom of the dial. Here he heard that before the Red Sox–Mariners playoff game at Fenway Park, there had been a moment of silence for the victims of what the announcer called “the western Maine event.”

“Event,” Julia said. “A sports-radio term if ever I heard one. Might as well turn it off.”

A mile or so past the church, they began to see a glow through the trees. They came around a curve and into the glare of lights almost the size of Hollywood premiere kliegs. Two pointed in their direction; two more were tilted straight up. Every pothole in the road stood out in stark relief. The trunks of the birches looked like narrow ghosts. Barbie felt as if they were driving into a noir movie from the late nineteen forties.

“Stop, stop, stop,” he said. “This is as close as you want to go. Looks like there’s nothing there, but take my word for it, there is. It would likely blow the electronics in your little car, if nothing else.”

She stopped and they got out. For a moment they just stood in front of the car, squinting into the bright light. Julia raised one hand to shield her eyes.

Parked beyond the lights, nose to nose, were two brown canvas-back military trucks. Sawhorses had been placed on the road for good measure, their feet braced with sandbags. Motors roared steadily in the darkness—not one generator but several. Barbie saw thick electrical cables snaking away from the spotlights and into the woods, where other lights glared through the trees.

“They’re going to light the perimeter,” he said, and twirled one finger in the air, like an ump signaling a home run. “Lights around the whole town, shining in and shining up.”

“Why up?”

“The up ones to warn away air traffic. If any gets through, that is. I’d guess it’s mostly tonight they’re worried about. By tomorrow they’ll have the airspace over The Mill sewn up like one of Uncle Scrooge’s moneybags.”

On the dark side of the spotlights, but visible in their back-splash, were half a dozen armed soldiers, standing at parade rest with their backs turned. They must have heard the approach of the car, quiet as it was, but not one of them so much as looked around.

Julia called, “Hello, fellas!”

No one turned. Barbie didn’t expect it—on their way out, Julia had told Barbie what Cox had told her—but he had to try. And because he could read their insignia, he knew
what
to try. The Army might be running this show—Cox’s involvement suggested that—but these fellows weren’t Army.

“Yo, Marines!” he called.

Nothing. Barbie stepped closer. He saw a dark horizontal line hanging on the air above the road, but ignored it for the time being. He was more interested in the men guarding the barrier. Or the Dome. Shumway had said Cox called it the Dome.

“I’m surprised to see you Force Recon boys stateside,” he said, walking a little closer. “That little Afghanistan problem over, is it?”

Nothing. He walked closer. The grit of the hardpan under his shoes seemed very loud.

“A remarkably high number of pussies in Force Recon, or so I’ve heard. I’m relieved, actually. If this situation was really bad, they would have sent in the Rangers.”

“Pogeybait,” one of them muttered.

It wasn’t much, but Barbie was encouraged. “Stand easy, fellas; stand easy and let’s talk this over.”

More nothing. And he was as close to the barrier (or the Dome) as he wanted to go. His skin didn’t rash out in goosebumps and the hair on his neck didn’t try to stand up, but he knew the thing was there. He sensed it.

And could see it: that stripe hanging on the air. He didn’t know what color it would be in daylight, but he was guessing red, the color of danger. It was spray paint, and he would have bet the entire contents of his bank account (currently just over five thousand dollars) that it went all the way around the barrier.

Like a stripe on a shirtsleeve,
he thought.

He balled a fist and rapped on his side of the stripe, once more producing that knuckles-on-glass sound. One of the Marines jumped.

Julia began: “I’m not sure that’s a good—”

Barbie ignored her. He was starting to be angry. Part of him had been waiting to be angry all day, and here was his chance. He knew it would do no good to go off on these guys—they were only spear-carriers—but it was hard to bite back. “Yo, Marines! Help a brother out.”

“Quit it, pal.” Although the speaker didn’t turn around, Barbie knew it was the CO of this happy little band. He recognized the tone, had used it himself. Many times. “We’ve got our orders, so
you
help a brother out. Another time, another place, I’d be happy to buy you a beer or kick your ass. But not here, not tonight. So what do you say?”

“I say okay,” Barbie said. “But seeing as how we’re all on the same side, I don’t have to like it.” He turned to Julia. “Got your phone?”

She held it up. “You should get one. They’re the coming thing.”

“I have one,” Barbie said. “A disposable Best Buy special. Hardly ever use it. Left it in a drawer when I tried to blow town. Saw no reason not to leave it there tonight.”

She handed him hers. “You’ll have to punch the number, I’m afraid. I’ve got work to do.” She raised her voice so the soldiers standing beyond the glaring lights could hear her. “I’m the editor of the local newspaper, after all, and I want to get some pix.” She raised her voice a little more. “Especially a few of soldiers standing with their backs turned on a town that’s in trouble.”

“Ma’am, I kind of wish you wouldn’t do that,” the CO said. He was a blocky fellow with a broad back.

“Stop me,” she invited.

“I think you know we can’t do that,” he said. “As far as our backs being turned, those are our orders.”

“Marine,” she said, “you take your orders, roll em tight, bend over, and stick em where the air quality is questionable.” In the brilliant light, Barbie saw a remarkable thing: her mouth set in a harsh, unforgiving line and her eyes streaming tears.

While Barbie dialed the number with the weird area code, she got her camera and began snapping. The flash wasn’t very bright compared to the big generator-driven spotlights, but Barbie saw the soldiers flinch every time it went off.
Probably hoping their fucking insignia doesn’t show,
he thought.

2

United States Army Colonel James O. Cox had said he’d be sitting with a hand on the phone at ten thirty. Barbie and Julia Shumway had run a little late and Barbie didn’t place the call until twenty of eleven, but Cox’s hand must have stayed right there, because the phone only managed half a ring before Barbie’s old boss said, “Hello, this is Ken.”

Barbie was still mad, but laughed just the same. “Yes sir. And I continue to be the bitch who gets all the good shit.”

Cox also laughed, no doubt thinking they were off to a good start. “How are you, Captain Barbara?”

“Sir, I’m fine, sir. But with respect, it’s just Dale Barbara now. The only things I captain these days are the grills and Fry-O-Lators in the local restaurant, and I’m in no mood for small talk. I am perplexed, sir, and since I’m looking at the backs of a bunch of pogey-bait Marines who won’t turn around and look me in the eye, I’m also pretty goddam pissed off.”

“Understood. And
you
need to understand something from my end. If there was anything at all those men could do to aid or end this situation, you would be looking at their faces instead of their asses. Do you believe that?”