Under the Dome, Page 25

  7

  Junior sat in the dark with his girlfriends.

  It was strange, even he thought so, but it was also soothing.

  When he and the other new deputies had gotten back to the police station after the colossal fuckup in Dinsmore's field, Stacey Moggin (still in uniform herself, and looking tired) had told them they could have another four duty-hours if they wanted. There was going to be plenty of overtime on offer, at least for a while, and when it came time for the town to pay, Stacey said, she was sure there'd be bonuses, as well ... probably provided by a grateful United States government.

  Carter, Mel, Georgia Roux, and Frank DeLesseps had all agreed to work the extra hours. It wasn't really the money; they were getting off on the job. Junior was too, but he'd also been hatching another of his headaches. This was depressing after feeling absolutely tip-top all day.

  He told Stacey he'd pass, if that was all right. She assured him it was, but reminded him he was scheduled back on duty tomorrow at seven o'clock. "There'll be plenty to do," she said.

  On the steps, Frankie hitched up his belt and said, "I think I'll swing by Angie's house. She probably went someplace with Dodee, but I'd hate to think she slipped in the shower--that she's lying there all paralyzed, or something."

  Junior felt a throb go through his head. A small white spot began to dance in front of his left eye. It seemed to be jigging and jagging with his heartbeat, which had just speeded up.

  "I'll go by, if you want," he told Frankie. "It's on my way."

  "Really? You don't mind?"

  Junior shook his head. The white spot in front of his eye darted crazily, sickeningly, when he did. Then it settled again.

  Frankie lowered his voice. "Sammy Bushey gave me some lip out at the field day."

  "That hole," Junior said.

  "No doubt. She goes, 'What are you going to do, arrest me?' " Frankie raised his voice to a snarky falsetto that scraped Junior's nerves. The dancing white spot actually seemed to turn red, and for a moment he considered putting his hands around his old friend's neck and choking the life out of him so that he, Junior, would never have to be subjected to that falsetto again.

  "What I'm thinking," Frankie continued, "is I might go out there after I'm off. Teach her a lesson. You know, Respect Your Local Police."

  "She's a skank. Also a lesboreenie."

  "That might make it even better." Frankie had paused, looking toward the weird sunset. "This Dome thing could have an upside. We can do pretty much whatever we want. For the time being, anyway. Consider it, chum." Frankie squeezed his crotch.

  "Sure," Junior had replied, "but I'm not particularly horny."

  Except now he was. Well, sort of. It wasn't like he was going to fuck them, or anything but--

  "But you're still my girlfriends," Junior said in the darkness of the pantry. He'd used a flashlight at first, but then had turned it off. The dark was better. "Aren't you?"

  They didn't reply. If they did, Junior thought, I'd have a major miracle to report to my dad and Reverend Coggins.

  He was sitting against a wall lined with shelves of canned goods. He had propped Angie on his right and Dodee on his left. Menagerie a trios, as they said in the Penthouse Forum. His girls hadn't looked too good with the flashlight on, their swollen faces and bulging eyes only partially obscured by their hanging hair, but once he turned it off ... hey! They could have been a couple of live chicks!

  Except for the smell, that was. A mixture of old shit and decay just starting to happen. But it wasn't too bad, because there were other, more pleasant smells in here: coffee, chocolate, molasses, dried fruit, and--maybe--brown sugar.

  Also a faint aroma of perfume. Dodee's? Angie's? He didn't know. What he knew was that his headache was better again and that disturbing white spot had gone away. He slid his hand down and cupped Angie's breast.

  "You don't mind me doing that, do you, Ange? I mean, I know you're Frankie's girlfriend, but you guys sort of broke up and hey, it's only copping a feel. Also--I hate to tell you this, but I think he's got cheating on his mind tonight."

  He groped with his free hand, found one of Dodee's. It was chilly, but he put it on his crotch anyway. "Oh my, Dodes," he said. "That's pretty bold. But you do what you feel, girl; get down with your bad self."

  He'd have to bury them, of course. Soon. The Dome was apt to pop like a soap bubble, or the scientists would find a way to dissolve it. When that happened, the town would be flooded with investigators. And if the Dome stayed in place, there would likely be some sort of food-finding committee going house to house, looking for supplies.

  Soon. But not right now. Because this was soothing.

  Also sort of exciting. People wouldn't understand, of course, but they wouldn't have to understand. Because--

  "This is our secret," Junior whispered in the dark. "Isn't it, girls?"

  They did not reply (although they would, in time).

  Junior sat with his arms around the girls he had murdered, and at some point he drifted off to sleep.

  8

  When Barbie and Brenda Perkins left the Town Hall at eleven, the meeting was still going on. The two of them walked down Main to Morin without speaking much at first. There was still a small stack of the Democrat one-page extras on the corner of Main and Maple. Barbie slid one out from beneath the rock anchoring the pile. Brenda had a Penlite in her purse and shone the beam on the headline.

  "Seeing it in print should make it easier to believe, but it doesn't," she said.

  "No," he agreed.

  "You and Julia collaborated on this to make sure James couldn't cover it up," she said. "Isn't that so?"

  Barbie shook his head. "He wouldn't try, because it can't be done. When that missile hits, it's going to make one hell of a bang. Julia just wanted to make sure Rennie doesn't get to spin the news his way, whatever way that might be." He tapped the one-sheet. "To be perfectly blunt, I see this as insurance. Selectman Rennie's got to be thinking, 'If he was ahead of me on this, what other information is he ahead of me on?'"

  "James Rennie can be a very dangerous adversary, my friend." They began walking again. Brenda folded the paper and tucked it under her arm. "My husband was investigating him."

  "For what?"

  "I don't know how much to tell you," she said. "The choices seem to come down to all or nothing. And Howie had no absolute proof--that's one thing I do know. Although he was close."

  "This isn't about proof," Barbie said. "It's about me staying out of jail if tomorrow doesn't go well. If what you know might help me with that--"

  "If staying out of jail is the only thing you're worried about, I'm disappointed in you."

  It wasn't all, and Barbie guessed the widow Perkins knew it. He had listened carefully at the meeting, and although Rennie had taken pains to be at his most ingratiating and sweetly reasonable, Barbie had still been appalled. He thought that, beneath the goshes and gollies and doggone-its, the man was a raptor. He would exert control until it was wrested from him; he would take what he needed until he was stopped. That made him dangerous for everybody, not just for Dale Barbara.

  "Mrs. Perkins--"

  "Brenda, remember?"

  "Brenda, right. Put it this way, Brenda: if the Dome stays in place, this town is going to need help from someone other than a used-car salesman with delusions of grandeur. I can't help anybody if I'm in the calabozo."

  "What my husband believed is that Big Jim was helping himself."

  "How? To what? And how much?"

  She said, "Let's see what happens with the missile. If it doesn't work, I'll tell you everything. If it does, I'll sit down with the County Attorney when the dust settles ... and, in the words of Ricky Ricardo, James Rennie will have some 'splainin to do."

  "You're not the only one waiting to see what happens with the missile. Tonight, butter wouldn't melt in Rennie's mouth. If the Cruise bounces off instead of punching through, I think we may see his other side."

  She snapped off the Penlit
e and looked up. "See the stars," she said. "So bright. There's the Dipper ... Cassiopeia ... the Great Bear. All just the same. I find that comforting. Do you?"

  "Yes."

  They said nothing for a little while, only looked up at the glimmering sprawl of the Milky Way. "But they always make me feel very small and very ... very brief." She laughed, then said--rather timidly: "Would you mind if I took your arm, Barbie?"

  "Not at all."

  She grasped his elbow. He put his hand over hers. Then he walked her home.

  9

  Big Jim adjourned the meeting at eleven twenty. Peter Randolph bade them all good night and left. He planned to start the evacuation on the west side of town at seven AM sharp, and hoped to have the entire area around Little Bitch Road clear by noon. Andrea followed, walking slowly, with her hands planted in the small of her back. It was a posture with which they had all become familiar.

  Although his meeting with Lester Coggins was very much on his mind (and sleep; he wouldn't mind getting a little damned sleep), Big Jim asked her if she could stay behind a moment or two.

  She looked at him questioningly. Behind him, Andy Sanders was ostentatiously stacking files and putting them back in the gray steel cabinet.

  "And close the door," Big Jim said pleasantly.

  Now looking worried, she did as he asked. Andy went on doing the end-of-meeting housework, but his shoulders were hunched, as if against a blow. Whatever it was Jim wanted to talk to her about, Andy knew already. And judging by his posture, it wasn't good.

  "What's on your mind, Jim?" she asked.

  "Nothing serious." Which meant it was. "But it did seem to me, Andrea, that you were getting pretty chummy with that Barbara fellow before the meeting. With Brenda, too, for that matter."

  "Brenda? That's just ..." She started to say ridiculous, but that seemed a little strong. "Just silly. I've known Brenda for thirty yea--"

  "And Mr. Barbara for three months. If, that is, eating a man's waffles and bacon is a basis for knowing him."

  "I think he's Colonel Barbara now."

  Big Jim smiled. "Hard to take that seriously when the closest thing he can get to a uniform is a pair of bluejeans and a tee-shirt."

  "You saw the President's letter."

  "I saw something Julia Shumway could have composed on her own gosh-darn computer. Isn't that right, Andy?"

  "Right," Andy said without turning around. He was still filing. And then refiling what he'd already filed, from the look of it.

  "And suppose it was from the President?" Big Jim said. The smile she hated was spreading on his broad, jowly face. Andrea observed with some fascination that she could see stubble on those jowls, maybe for the first time, and she understood why Jim was always so careful to shave. The stubble gave him a sinister Nixonian look.

  "Well ..." Worry was now edging into fright. She wanted to tell Jim she'd only been being polite, but it had actually been a little more, and she guessed Jim had seen that. He saw a great deal. "Well, he is the Commander in Chief, you know."

  Big Jim made a pshaw gesture. "Do you know what a commander is, Andrea? I'll tell you. Someone who merits loyalty and obedience because he can provide the resources to help those in need. It's supposed to be a fair trade."

  "Yes!" she said eagerly. "Resources like that Cruiser missile thing!"

  "And if it works, that's all very fine."

  "How could it not? He said it might have a thousand-pound war-head!"

  "Considering how little we know about the Dome, how can you or any of us be sure? How can we be sure it won't blow the Dome up and leave nothing but a mile-deep crater where Chester's Mill used to be?"

  She looked at him in dismay. Hands in the small of her back, rubbing and kneading at the place where the pain lived.

  "Well, that's in God's hands," he said. "And you're right, Andrea--it may work. But if it doesn't, we're on our own, and a commander in chief who can't help his citizens isn't worth a squirt of warm pee in a cold chamberpot, as far as I'm concerned. If it doesn't work, and if they don't blow all of us to Glory, somebody is going to have to take hold in this town. Is it going to be some drifter the President taps with his magic wand, or is it going to be the elected officials already in place? Do you see where I'm going with this?"

  "Colonel Barbara seemed very capable to me," she whispered.

  "Stop calling him that!" Big Jim shouted. Andy dropped a file, and Andrea took a step backward, uttering a squeak of fear as she did so.

  Then she straightened, momentarily recovering some of the Yankee steel that had given her the courage to run for Selectman in the first place. "Don't you yell at me, Jim Rennie. I've known you since you were cutting out Sears catalogue pictures in the first grade and pasting them on construction paper, so don't you yell."

  "Oh gosh, she's offended. " The fierce smile now spread from ear to ear, lifting his upper face into an unsettling mask of jollity. "Isn't that too cotton-picking bad. But it's late and I'm tired and I've handed out about all the sweet syrup I can manage for one day. So you listen to me now, and don't make me repeat myself." He glanced at his watch. "It's eleven thirty-five, and I want to be home by midnight."

  "I don't understand what you want of me!"

  He rolled his eyes as if he couldn't believe her stupidity. "In a nutshell? I want to know you're going to be on my side--mine and Andy's--if this harebrained missile idea doesn't work. Not with some dishwashing johnny-come-lately."

  She squared up her shoulders and let go of her back. She managed to meet his eyes, but her lips were trembling. "And if I think Colonel Barbara--Mr. Barbara, if you prefer--is better qualified to manage things in a crisis situation?"

  "Well, I have to go with Jiminy Cricket on that one," Big Jim said. "Let your conscience be your guide." His voice had dropped to a murmur that was more frightening than his shout had been. "But there's those pills you take. Those OxyContins."

  Andrea felt her skin go cold. "What about them?"

  "Andy's got a pretty good supply put aside for you, but if you were to back the wrong horse in this-here race, those pills just might disappear. Isn't that right, Andy?"

  Andy had begun washing out the coffeemaker. He looked unhappy and he wouldn't meet Andrea's brimming eyes, but there was no hesitation in his reply. "Yes," he said. "In a case like that, I might have to turn them down the pharmacist's toilet. Dangerous to have drugs like that around with the town cut off and all."

  "You can't do that!" she cried. "I have a prescription!"

  Big Jim said kindly, "The only prescription you need is sticking with the people who know this town best, Andrea. For the present, it's the only kind of prescription that will do you any good."

  "Jim, I need my pills." She heard the whine in her voice--so much like her mother's during the last bad years when she'd been bedridden--and hated it. "I need them!"

  "I know," Big Jim said. "God has burdened you with a great deal of pain." Not to mention a big old monkey on your back, he thought.

  "Just do the right thing," Andy said. His dark-circled eyes were sad and earnest. "Jim knows what's best for the town; always has. We don't need some outsider telling us our business."

  "If I do, will I keep getting my pain pills?"

  Andy's face lit in a smile. "You betcha! I might even take it on myself to up the dosage a little. Say a hundred milligrams more a day? Couldn't you use it? You look awfully uncomfortable."

  "I suppose I could use a little more," Andrea said dully. She lowered her head. She hadn't taken a drink, not even a glass of wine, since the night of the Senior Prom when she'd gotten so sick, had never smoked a joint, had never even seen cocaine except on TV. She was a good person. A very good person. So how had she gotten into a box like this? By falling while she was going to get the mail? Was that all it took to turn someone into a drug addict? If so, how unfair. How horrible. "But only forty milligrams. Forty more would be enough, I think."

  "Are you sure?" Big Jim asked.

  She didn't feel s
ure at all. That was the devil of it.

  "Maybe eighty," she said, and wiped the tears from her face. And, in a whisper: "You're blackmailing me."

  The whisper was low, but Big Jim heard it. He reached for her. Andrea flinched, but Big Jim only took her hand. Gently.

  "No," he said. "That would be a sin. We're helping you. And all we want in return is for you to help us."

  10

  There was a thud.

  It brought Sammy wide awake in bed even though she'd smoked half a doob and drunk three of Phil's beers before falling out at ten o'clock. She always kept a couple of sixes in the fridge and still thought of them as "Phil's beers," although he'd been gone since April. She'd heard rumors that he was still in town, but discounted them. Surely if he was still around, she would have seen him sometime during the last six months, wouldn't she? It was a small town, just like that song said.

  Thud!

  That got her bolt upright, and listening for Little Walter's wail. It didn't come and she thought, Oh God, that damn crib fell apart! And if he can't even cry--

  She threw the covers back and ran for the door. She smacked into the wall to the left of it, instead. Almost fell down. Damn dark! Damn power company! Damn Phil, going off and leaving her like this, with no one to stick up for her when guys like Frank DeLesseps were mean to her and scared her and--

  Thud!

  She felt along the top of the dresser and found the flashlight. She turned it on and hurried out the door. She started to turn left, into the bedroom where Little Walter slept, but the thud came again. Not from the left, but from straight ahead, across the cluttered living room. Someone was at the trailer's front door. And now there came muffled laughter. Whoever it was sounded like they had their drink on.

  She strode across the room, the tee-shirt she slept in rippling around her chubby thighs (she'd put on a little weight since Phil left, about fifty pounds, but when this Dome shit was over she intended to get on NutriSystem, return to her high school weight) and threw open the door.

  Flashlights--four of them, and high-powered--hit her in the face. From behind them came more laughter. One of those laughs was more of a nyuck-nyuck-nyuck, like Curly in the Three Stooges. She recognized that one, having heard it all through high school: Mel Searles.