Under the Dome: A Novel (46 page)

Rusty rose from the bench. “Could I speak to you for a minute, ma’am? Just a step or two over here.”

Caro looked puzzled and wary, but stepped with him to the side of the blue spruce.

“Has the boy exhibited any seizure activity?” Rusty asked. “That might include suddenly stopping what he’s doing … you know, just standing still for a while … or a fixed stare … smacking of the lips—”

“Nothing like that,” the man said, joining them. “No,”

Caro agreed, but she looked frightened.

The man saw it and turned an impressive frown on Rusty. “Are you a doctor?”

“Physician’s assistant. I thought maybe—”

“Well, I’m sure we appreciate your concern, Mr.—?”

“Eric Everett. Call me Rusty.”

“We appreciate your concern, Mr. Everett, but I believe it’s misplaced. Bear in mind that these children are without their mother—”

“And they spent two nights alone without much to eat,” Caro added. “They were trying to make it to town on their own when
those two …
officers
”—she wrinkled her nose as if the word had a bad smell—“found them.”

Rusty nodded. “That could explain it, I guess. Although the little girl seems fine.”

“Children react differently. And we better go. They’re getting away from us, Thurse.”

Alice and Aidan were running across the park, kicking up colorful bursts of fallen leaves, Alice flapping the checkerboard and yelling,
“Passionage! Passionage!”
at the top of her lungs. The boy was keeping up with her stride for stride and also yelling.

Kid had a momentary fugue, that’s all,
Rusty thought.
The rest was coincidence. Not even that—what American kid isn’t thinking of Halloween during the last half of October?
One thing was sure: if these people were asked later, they would remember exactly where and when they had seen Eric “Rusty” Everett. So much for stealth.

The gray-haired man raised his voice. “Children! Slow down!”

The young woman considered Rusty, then put out her hand. “Thank you for your concern, Mr. Everett. Rusty.”

“Probably overconcern. Occupational hazard.”

“You’re totally forgiven. This has been the craziest weekend in the history of the world. Chalk it up to that.”

“You bet. And if you need me, check the hospital or the Health Center.” He pointed in the direction of Cathy Russell, which would be visible through the trees once the rest of the leaves fell.
If
they fell.

“Or this bench,” she said, still smiling.

“Or this bench, right.” Also smiling.

“Caro!” Thurse sounded impatient. “Come
on
!”

She gave Rusty a little wave—no more than a twiddle of the fingertips—then ran after the others. She ran lightly, gracefully. Rusty wondered if Thurse knew that girls who could run lightly and gracefully almost always ran away from their elderly lovers, sooner or later. Maybe he did. Maybe it had happened to him before.

Rusty watched them cut across the common toward the spire of the Congo church. Eventually the trees screened them from sight. When he looked back at the PD building, Junior Rennie was gone.

Rusty sat where he was for a moment of two, drumming his fingers on his thighs. Then he came to a decision and stood up. Checking the town storage shed for the hospital’s missing propane tanks could wait. He was more curious about what The Mill’s one and only Army officer was doing in the Town Hall.

9

What Barbie was doing as Rusty crossed Comm Lane to the Town Hall was whistling appreciatively through his teeth. The fallout shelter was as long as an Amtrak dining car, and the shelves were fully stocked with canned goods. Most looked pretty fishy: stacks of sardines, ranks of salmon, and a lot of something called Snow’s Clam Fry-Ettes, which Barbie sincerely hoped he would never have to sample. There were boxes of dry goods, including many large plastic canisters marked RICE, WHEAT, POWDERED MILK, and SUGAR. There were stacked flats of bottles labeled DRINKING WATER. He counted ten large cartons of U.S. GOV’T SURPLUS CRACKERS. Two more were labeled U.S. GOV’T SURPLUS CHOCOLATE BARS. On the wall above these was a yellowing sign reading 700 CALORIES A DAY KEEPS HUNGER AT BAY.

“Dream on,” Barbie muttered.

There was a door at the far end. He opened it on Stygian blackness, felt around, found a light switch. Another room, not quite so big but still large. It looked old and disused—not dirty, Al Timmons at least must know about it because someone had been dusting the shelves and dry-mopping the floors, but neglected for sure. The stored water was in glass bottles, and he hadn’t seen any of those since a brief stint in Saudi.

This second room contained a dozen folded cots plus plain blue blankets and mattresses that had been zipped into clear plastic covers, pending use. There were more supplies, including half a dozen cardboard canisters labeled SANITATION KIT and another dozen marked AIR MASKS. There was a small auxiliary generator that
could supply minimal power. It was running; must have started up when he turned on the lights. Flanking the little gennie were two shelves. On one was a radio that looked as if it might have been new around the time C. W. McCall’s novelty song “Convoy” had been a hit. On the other shelf were two hotplates and a metal box painted bright yellow. The logo on the side was from the days when CD stood for something other than compact disc. It was what he had come to find.

Barbie picked it up, then almost dropped it—it was heavy. On the front was a gauge labeled COUNTS PER SECOND. When you turned the instrument on and pointed the sensor at something, the needle might stay in the green, rise to the yellow center of the dial … or go over into the red. That, Barbie assumed, would not be good.

He turned it on. The little power lamp stayed dark and the needle lay quiet against
0.

“Battery’s dead,” someone said from behind him. Barbie almost jumped out of his skin. He looked around and saw a tall, heavyset man with blond hair standing in the doorway between the two rooms.

For a moment the name eluded him, although the guy was at the restaurant most Sunday mornings, sometimes with his wife, always with his two little girls. Then it came to him. “Rusty Evers, right?”

“Close; it’s Everett.” The newcomer held out his hand. A little warily, Barbie walked over and shook it. “Saw you come in. And that”—he nodded to the Geiger counter—“is probably not a bad idea.
Something
must be keeping it in place.” He didn’t say what he meant by
it
and didn’t need to.

“Glad you approve. You almost scared me into a goddam heart attack. But you could take care of that, I guess. You’re a doc, right?”

“PA,” Rusty said. “That means—”

“I know what it means.”

“Okay, you win the waterless cookware.” Rusty pointed at the
Geiger counter. “That thing probably takes a six-volt dry cell. I’m pretty sure I saw some at Burpee’s. Less sure anybody’s there right now. So … maybe a little more rekkie?”

“What exactly would we be reconning?”

“The supply shed out back.”

“And we’d want to do that because?”

“That depends on what we find. If it’s what we lost up at the hospital, you and I might exchange a little information.”

“Want to share on what you lost?”

“Propane, brother.”

Barbie considered this. “What the hell. Let’s take a look.”

10

Junior stood at the foot of the rickety stairs leading up the side of Sanders Hometown Drug, wondering if he could possibly climb them with his head aching the way it was. Maybe. Probably. On the other hand, he thought he might get halfway up and his skull would pop like a New Year’s Eve noisemaker. The spot was back in front of his eye, jigging and jagging with his heartbeat, but it was no longer white. It had turned bright red.

I’d be okay in the dark,
he thought.
In the pantry, with my girlfriends.

If this went right, he could go there. Right now the pantry of the McCain house on Prestile Street seemed like the most desirable place on earth. Of course Coggins was there, too, but so what? Junior could always push
that
gospel-shouting asshole to one side. And Coggins had to stay hidden, at least for the time being. Junior had no interest in protecting his father (and was neither surprised nor dismayed at what his old man had done; Junior had always known Big Jim Rennie had murder in him), but he
did
have an interest in fixing Dale Barbara’s little red wagon.

If we handle this right, we can do more than get him out of the way,
Big Jim had said that morning.
We can use him to unify the town in the face
of this crisis. And that cotton-picking newspaperwoman. I have an idea about her, too.
He had laid a warm and hammy hand on his son’s shoulder.
We’re a team, son.

Maybe not forever, but for the time being, they were pulling the same plow. And they would take care of
Baaarbie.
It had even occurred to Junior that Barbie was responsible for his headaches. If Barbie really had been overseas—Iraq was the rumor—then he might have come home with some weird Middle Eastern souvenirs. Poison, for instance. Junior had eaten in Sweetbriar Rose many times. Barbara could easily have dropped a little sumpin-sumpin in his food. Or his coffee. And if Barbie wasn’t working the grill personally, he could have gotten Rose to do it. That cunt was under his spell.

Junior mounted the stairs, walking slowly, pausing every four steps. His head didn’t explode, and when he reached the top, he groped in his pocket for the apartment key Andy Sanders had given him. At first he couldn’t find it and thought he might have lost it, but at last his fingers came upon it, hiding under some loose change.

He glanced around. A few people were still walking back from Dipper’s, but no one looked at him up here on the landing outside Barbie’s apartment. The key turned in the lock, and he slipped inside.

He didn’t turn on the lights, although Sanders’s generator was probably sending juice to the apartment. The dimness made the pulsing spot in front of his eye less visible. He looked around curiously. There were books: shelves and shelves of them. Had
Baaarbie
been planning on leaving them behind when he blew town? Or had he made arrangements—possibly with Petra Searles, who worked downstairs—to ship them someplace? If so, he’d probably made similar arrangements to ship the rug on the living room floor—some camel-jockey-looking artifact Barbie had probably picked up in the local bazaar when there were no suspects to waterboard or little boys to bugger.

He hadn’t made arrangements to have the stuff shipped, Junior decided. He hadn’t needed to, because he had never planned to leave at all. Once the idea occurred, Junior wondered why he hadn’t seen
it before.
Baaarbie
liked it here; would never leave of his own free will. He was as happy as a maggot in dog-puke.

Find something he can’t talk away,
Big Jim had instructed.
Something that can only be his. Do you understand me?

What do you think I am, Dad, stupid?
Junior thought now.
If I’m stupid, how come it was
me
who saved
your
ass last night?

But his father had a mighty swing on him when he got his mad on, that much was undeniable. He had never slapped or spanked Junior as a child, something Junior had always attributed to his late mother’s ameliorating influence. Now he suspected it was because his father understood, deep in his heart, that once he started, he might not be able to stop.

“Like father, like son,” Junior said, and giggled. It hurt his head, but he giggled, anyway. What was that old saying about laughter being the best medicine?

He went into Barbie’s bedroom, saw the bed was neatly made, and thought briefly of how wonderful it would be to take a big shit right in the middle of it. Yes, and then wipe himself with the pillow-case.
How would you like that,
Baaarbie
?

He went to the dresser instead. Three or four pairs of jeans in the top drawer, plus two pairs of khaki shorts. Under the shorts was a cell phone, and for a moment he thought that was what he wanted. But no. It was a discount store special; what the kids at college called a burner or a throw-away. Barbie could always say it wasn’t his.

There were half a dozen pairs of skivvies and another four or five pairs of plain white athletic socks in the second drawer. Nothing at all in the third drawer.

He looked under the bed, his head thudding and whamming—not better after all, it seemed. And nothing under there, not even dust-kitties.
Baaarbie
was a neatnik. Junior considered taking the Imitrex in his watch-pocket, but didn’t. He’d taken two already, with absolutely no effect except for the metallic aftertaste in the back of his throat. He knew what medicine he needed: the dark pantry on Prestile Street. And the company of his girlfriends.

Meantime, he was here. And there had to be
something.

“Sumpin,” he whispered. “Gotta have a little sumpin-sumpin.”

He started back to the living room, wiping water from the corner of his throbbing left eye (not noticing it was tinged with blood), then stopped, struck by an idea. He returned to the dresser, opened the sock-and-underwear drawer again. The socks were balled. When he was in high school, Junior had sometimes hidden a little weed or a couple of uppers in his balled-up socks; once one of Adriette Nedeau’s thongs. Socks were a good hiding place. He took out the neatly made bundles one at a time, feeling them up.

He hit paydirt on the third ball, something that felt like a flat piece of metal. No, two of them. He unrolled the socks and shook the heavy one over the top of the dresser.

What fell out were Dale Barbara’s dog tags. And in spite of his terrible headache, Junior smiled.

In the frame, Baaarbie,
he thought.
You are in the fucking frame.

11

On the Tarker’s Mills side of Little Bitch Road, the fires set by the Fasthawk missiles were still raging, but would be out by dark; fire departments from four towns, augmented by a mixed detachment of Marine and Army grunts, were working on it, and gaining. It would have been out even sooner, Brenda Perkins judged, if the firefighters over there hadn’t had a brisk wind to contend with. On The Mill side, they’d had no such problem. It was a blessing today. Later on, it might be a curse. There was no way to know.