Under the Dome, Page 44

  The smile disappears from Mel's face; the urge to nyuck-nyuck has left him. "Shut up," he says.

  At the back of the crowd, Ricky and Randall Killian have arrived in a Chevrolet Canyon pickemup. Sam Verdreaux is not far behind, walking, of course; Sam lost his license to drive for good in '07.

  Gina takes a step backward, staring at Mel with wide eyes. Beside her, Alden Dinsmore hulks like a farmer-robot with a dead battery. "You guys are supposed to be police? Hel-lo ?"

  "That rape stuff was nothing but a whore lie," Frank says. "And you better quit yelling about it before you get arrested for disturbing the peace."

  "Fuckin right," Georgia says. She has moved a little closer to Carter. He ignores her. He is surveying the crowd. And that's what it is now. If fifty people make a crowd, then this is one. More coming, too. Carter wishes he had his gun. He doesn't like the hostility he's seeing.

  Velma Winter, who runs Brownie's (or did, before it closed), arrives with Tommy and Willow Anderson. Velma is a big, burly woman who combs her hair like Bobby Darin and looks like she could be the warrior queen of Dyke Nation, but she has buried two husbands and the story you can hear at the bullshit table in Sweetbriar is that she fucked them both to death and is looking for number three at Dipper's on Wednesdays; that's Country Karaoke Night, and draws an older crowd. Now she plants herself in front of Carter, hands on her meaty hips.

  "Closed, huh?" she says in a businesslike voice. "Let's see your paperwork."

  Carter is confused, and being confused makes him angry. "Back off, bitch. I don't need no paperwork. The Chief sent us down here. The Selectmen ordered it. It's gonna be a food depot."

  "Rationing? That what you mean?" She snorts. "Not in my town." She shoves between Mel and Frank and starts hammering on the door. "Open up! Open up in there! "

  "Nobody home," Frank says. "You might as well quit it."

  But Ernie Calvert hasn't left. He comes down the pasta-flour-and-sugar aisle. Velma sees him and starts hammering louder. "Open up, Ernie! Open up!"

  "Open up!" voices from the crowd agree.

  Frank looks at Mel and nods. Together they grab Velma and muscle her two hundred pounds away from the door. Georgia Roux has turned and is waving Ernie back. Ernie doesn't go. Numb fuck just stands there.

  "Open up!" Velma bawls. "Open up! Open up!"

  Tommy and Willow join her. So does Bill Wicker, the postman. So does Lissa, her face shining--all her life she has hoped to be part of a spontaneous demonstration, and here's her chance. She raises a clenched fist and begins to shake it in time--two small shakes on open and a big one on up. Others imitate her. Open up becomes Oh-pun UP! Oh-pun UP! Oh-pun UP! Now they are all shaking their fists in that two-plus-one rhythm--maybe seventy people, maybe eighty, and more arriving all the time. The thin blue line in front of the market looks thinner than ever. The four younger cops look toward Freddy Denton for ideas, but Freddy has no ideas.

  He does, however, have a gun. You better fire it into the air pretty soon, Baldy, Carter thinks, or these people are gonna run us down.

  Two more cops--Rupert Libby and Toby Whelan--drive down Main Street from the PD (where they've been drinking coffee and watching CNN), blowing past Julia Shumway, who is jogging along with a camera slung over her shoulder.

  Jackie Wettington and Henry Morrison also start toward the supermarket, but then the walkie-talkie on Henry's belt crackles. It's Chief Randolph, saying that Henry and Jackie should hold their station at the Gas & Grocery.

  "But we hear--" Henry begins.

  "Those are your orders," Randolph says, not adding that they are orders he is just passing on--from a higher power, as it were.

  "Oh-pun UP! Oh-pun UP! Oh-pun UP!" The crowd shaking fisted power-salutes in the warm air. Still scared, but excited, too. Getting into it. The Chef would have looked at them and seen a bunch of tyro tweekers, needing only a Grateful Dead tune on the soundtrack to make the picture complete.

  The Killian boys and Sam Verdreaux are working their way through the crowd. They chant--not as protective coloration but because that crowd-molting-into-mob vibe is just too strong to resist--but don't bother shaking their fists; they have work to do. No one pays them any particular mind. Later, only a few people will remember seeing them at all.

  Nurse Ginny Tomlinson is also working her way through the crowd. She has come to tell the girls they are needed at Cathy Russell; there are new patients, one a serious case. That would be Wanda Crumley from Eastchester. The Crumleys live next to the Evanses, out near the Motton town line. When Wanda went over this morning to check on Jack, she found him dead not twenty feet from where the Dome cut off his wife's hand. Jack was sprawled on his back with a bottle beside him and his brains drying on the grass. Wanda ran back to her house, crying her husband's name, and she had no more than reached him when she was felled by a coronary. Wendell Crumley was lucky not to crash his little Subaru wagon on his way to the hospital--he did eighty most of the way. Rusty is with Wanda now, but Ginny doesn't think Wanda--fifty, overweight, a heavy smoker--is going to make it.

  "Girls," she says. "We need you at the hospital."

  "Those are the ones, Mrs. Tomlinson!" Gina shouts. She has to shout to be heard over the chanting crowd. She's pointing at the cops and beginning to cry--partly from fear and tiredness, mostly from outrage. "Those are the ones who raped her!"

  This time Ginny looks beyond the uniforms, and realizes Gina's right. Ginny Tomlinson isn't afflicted with Piper Libby's admittedly vile temper, but she has a temper, and there's an aggravating factor at work here: unlike Piper, Ginny saw the Bushey girl with her pants off. Her vagina lacerated and swelled. Huge bruises on her thighs that couldn't be seen until the blood was washed off. Such a lot of blood.

  Ginny forgets about the girls being needed at the hospital. She forgets about getting them out of a dangerous and volatile situation. She even forgets about Wanda Crumley's heart attack. She strides forward, elbowing someone out of her way (it happens to be Bruce Yardley, the cashier-cum -bagboy, who is shaking his fist like everyone else), and approaches Mel and Frank. They are both studying the ever more hostile crowd, and they don't see her coming.

  Ginny raises both hands, looking for a moment like the bad guy surrendering to the sheriff in a Western. Then she brings both hands around and slaps both young men at the same time. "You bastards !" she shouts. "How could you? How could you be so cowardly ? So catdirt mean ? You'll go to jail for this, all of y--"

  Mel doesn't think, just reacts. He punches her in the center of her face, breaking her glasses and her nose. She goes stumbling backward, bleeding, crying out. Her old-fashioned RN cap, shocked free of the bobbypins holding it, tumbles from her head. Bruce Yardley, the young cashier, tries to grab her and misses. Ginny hits a line of shopping carts. They go rolling like a little train. She drops to her hands and knees, crying in pain and shock. Bright drops of blood from her nose--not just broken but shattered--begin falling on the big yellow RK of NO PARKING ZONE.

  The crowd goes temporarily silent, shocked, as Gina and Harriet rush to where Ginny crouches.

  Then Lissa Jamieson's voice rises, a clear perfect soprano: "YOU PIG BASTARDS!"

  That's when the chunk of rock flies. The first rock-thrower is never identified. It may be the only crime Sloppy Sam Verdreaux ever got away with.

  Junior dropped him off at the upper end of town, and Sam, with visions of whiskey dancing in his head, went prospecting on the east bank of Prestile Stream for just the right rock. Had to be big but not too big, or he wouldn't be able to throw it with any accuracy, even though once--a century ago, it seems sometimes; at others it seems very close--he was the starting pitcher for the Mills Wildcats in the first game of the Maine state tourney. He had found it at last, not far from the Peace Bridge: a pound, pound and a half, and as smooth as a goose egg.

  One more thing, Junior had said as he dropped Sloppy Sam off. It wasn't Junior's one more thing, but Junior did not tell Sam this any more than Chief Randolph had
told Wettington and Morrison, who had ordered them to stay on station. Wouldn't have been politic.

  Aim for the chick. That was Junior's final word to Sloppy Sam before leaving him. She deserves it, so don't miss.

  As Gina and Harriet in their white uniforms kneel beside the sobbing, bleeding RN on her hands and knees (and while everyone else's attention is there too), Sam winds up just as he did on that long-ago day in 1970, lets fly, and throws his first strike in over forty years.

  In more ways than one. The twenty-ounce chunk of quartz-shot granite strikes Georgia Roux dead in the mouth, shattering her jaw in five places and all but four of her teeth. She goes reeling back against the plate-glass window, her jaw sagging grotesquely almost to her chest, her yawning mouth pouring blood.

  An instant later two more rocks fly, one from Ricky Killian, one from Randall. Ricky's connects with the back of Bill Allnut's head and knocks the janitor to the pavement, not far from Ginny Tomlinson. Shit! Ricky thinks. I was supposed to hit a fuckin cop! Not only were those his orders; it's sort of what he has always wanted to do.

  Randall's aim is better. He nails Mel Searles square in the forehead. Mel goes down like a bag of mail.

  There is a pause, a moment of indrawn breath. Think of a car teetering on two wheels, deciding whether or not to go over. See Rose Twitchell looking around, bewildered and frightened, not sure what's happening, let alone what to do about it. See Anson put his arm around her waist. Listen to Georgia Roux howl through her hanging mouth, her cries weirdly like the sound the wind makes slipping across the waxed string of a tin-can mooseblower. Blood pours over her lacerated tongue as she hollers. See the reinforcements. Toby Whelan and Rupert Libby (he's Piper's cousin, though she doesn't brag on the connection) are first to arrive on the scene. They survey it ... then hang back. Next comes Linda Everett. She's on foot with another part-time cop, Marty Arsenault, puffing along in her wake. She starts to push through the crowd, but Marty--who didn't even put on his uniform this morning, just rolled out of bed and slipped into an old pair of bluejeans--grabs her by the shoulder. Linda almost breaks away from him, then thinks of her daughters. Ashamed of her own cowardice, she allows Marty to lead her over to where Rupe and Toby are watching developments. Of these four, only Rupe is wearing a gun this morning, and would he shoot? Balls he would; he can see his own wife in that crowd, holding hands with her mother (the mother-in-law Rupe wouldn't have minded shooting). See Julia arrive just behind Linda and Marty, gasping for breath but already grabbing her camera, dropping the lenscap in her hurry to start shooting. See Frank DeLesseps kneel down beside Mel just in time to avoid another rock, which whizzes over his head and shatters a hole in one of the supermarket doors.

  Then ...

  Then someone yells. Who will never be known, not even the sex of the shouter will ever be agreed upon, although most think a woman, and Rose will tell Anson later she's almost sure it was Lissa Jamieson.

  "GET THEM!"

  Someone else bellows "GROCERIES!" and the crowd surges forward.

  Freddy Denton fires his pistol once, into the air. Then he lowers it, in his panic about to empty it into the crowd. Before he can, someone wrests it from his hand. He goes down, shouting in pain. Then the toe of a big old farmer's boot--Alden Dinsmore's--connects with his temple. The lights don't go completely out for Officer Denton, but they dim considerably, and by the time they come back up to bright, the Great Supermarket Riot is over.

  Blood seeps through the bandage on Carter Thibodeau's shoulder and small rosettes are blooming on his blue shirt, but he is--for the time being, at least--unaware of the pain. He makes no attempt to run. He sets his feet and unloads on the first person to come into range. This happens to be Charles "Stubby" Norman, who runs the antique shop on the 117 edge of town. Stubby drops, clutching his spouting mouth.

  "Get back, you fucks!" Carter snarls. "Back, you sons of bitches! No looting! Get back!"

  Marta Edmunds, Rusty's babysitter, tries to help Stubby, and gets a Frank DeLesseps fist to the cheekbone for her pains. She staggers, holding the side of her face and looking unbelievingly at the young man who has just hit her ... and is then knocked flat, with Stubby beneath her, by a wave of charging would-be shoppers.

  Carter and Frank start punching at them, but they land only three blows before they are distracted by a weird, ululating scream. It's the town librarian, her hair hanging around her usually mild face. She's pushing a line of shopping carts, and she might be screaming banzai. Frank leaps out of her way, but the carts take care of Carter, sending him flying. He waves his arms, trying to stay up, and might actually manage to do so, except for Georgia's feet. He trips over them, lands on his back, and is trampled. He rolls over on his stomach, laces his hands over his head, and waits for it to be over.

  Julia Shumway clicks and clicks and clicks. Perhaps the pictures will reveal the faces of people she knows, but she sees only strangers in the viewfinder. A mob.

  Rupe Libby draws his sidearm and fires four shots into the air. The gunfire rolls off into the warm morning, flat and declamatory, a line of auditory exclamation points. Toby Whelan dives back into the car, bumping his head and knocking off his cap (CHESTER'S MILL DEPUTY on the front in yellow). He snatches the bullhorn off the back seat, puts it to his lips, and shouts: "STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING! BACK OFF! POLICE! STOP! THAT IS AN ORDER!"

  Julia snaps him.

  The crowd pays no attention to the gunshots or the bullhorn. They pay no attention to Ernie Calvert when he comes around the side of the building with his green duster churning about his pumping knees. "Come in the back!" he yells. "You don't need to do that, I've opened up the back!"

  The crowd is intent upon breaking and entering. They smash against the doors with their stickers reading IN and OUT and EVERYDAY LOW PRICES. The doors hold at first, then the lock snaps under the crowd's combined weight. The first to arrive are crushed against the doors and suffer injuries: two people with broken ribs, one sprained neck, two broken arms.

  Toby Whelan starts to raise the bullhorn again, then just sets it down, with exquisite care, on the hood of the car in which he and Rupe arrived. He picks up his DEPUTY cap, brushes it off, puts it back on. He and Rupe walk toward the store, then stop, helpless. Linda and Marty Arsenault join them. Linda sees Marta and leads her back to the little cluster of cops.

  "What happened?" Marta asks, dazed. "Did someone hit me? The side of my face is all hot. Who's watching Judy and Janelle?"

  "Your sister took them this morning," Linda says, and hugs her. "Don't worry."

  "Cora?"

  "Wendy." Cora, Marta's older sister, has been living in Seattle for years. Linda wonders if Marta has suffered a concussion. She thinks that Dr. Haskell should check her, and then remembers that Haskell is either in the hospital morgue or the Bowie Funeral Home. Rusty is on his own now, and today he is going to be very busy.

  Carter is half-carrying Georgia toward unit Two. She is still howling those eerie mooseblower cries. Mel Searles has regained some soupy semblance of consciousness. Frankie leads him toward Linda, Marta, Toby, and the other cops. Mel tries to raise his head, then drops it back to his chest. His split forehead is pouring blood; his shirt is soaked.

  People stream into the market. They race along the aisles, pushing shopping carts or grabbing baskets from a stack beside the charcoal briquets display (HAVE YOURSELF A FALL COOKOUT! the sign reads). Manuel Ortega, Alden Dinsmore's hired man, and his good friend Dave Douglas go straight to the checkout cash registers and start punching NO SALE buttons, grabbing money and stuffing it into their pockets, laughing like fools as they do so.

  The supermarket is full now; it is sale day. In frozen foods, two women are fighting over the last Pepperidge Farm Lemon Cake. In deli, one man baffs another man with a kielbasa, telling him to leave some of that goddam lunchmeat for other folks. The lunchmeat shopper turns and biffs the kielbasa wielder in the nose. Soon they are rolling on the floor, fists flying.

  Other brawls are breakin
g out. Rance Conroy, proprietor and sole employee of Conroy's Western Maine Electrical Service & Supplies ("Smiles Our Specialty"), punches Brendan Ellerbee, a retired University of Maine science teacher, when Ellerbee beats him to the last large sack of sugar. Ellerbee goes down, but he holds onto the ten-pound bag of Domino's, and when Conroy bends to take it, Ellerbee snarls "Here, then!" and smacks him in the face with it. The sugarsack bursts wide open, enveloping Rance Conroy in a white cloud. The electrician falls against one of the shelves, his face as white as a mime's, screaming that he can't see, he's blind. Carla Venziano, with her baby goggling over her shoulder from the carrier on her back, pushes Henrietta Clavard away from the display of Texmati Rice--Baby Steven loves rice, he also loves to play with the empty plastic containers, and Carla means to make sure she has plenty. Henrietta, who was eighty-four in January, goes sprawling on the hard knot of scrawn that used to be her butt. Lissa Jamieson shoves Will Freeman, who owns the local Toyota dealership, out of her way so she can get the last chicken in the coldcase. Before she can grab it, a teenage girl wearing a PUNK RAGE tee-shirt snatches it, sticks out her pierced tongue at Libby, and hies gaily away.

  There's a sound of shattering glass followed by a hearty cheer made up mostly (but not entirely) of men's voices. The beer cooler has been breached. Many shoppers, perhaps planning on HAVING THEMSELVES A FALL COOKOUT, stream in that direction. Instead of Oh-pun UP, the chant is now "Beer! Beer! Beer!"

  Other folks are streaming into the storerooms below and out back. Soon men and women are packing wine out by the jug and the case. Some carry cartons of vino on their heads like native bearers in an old jungle movie.

  Julia, her shoes crunching on crumbles of glass, shoots shoots shoots.

  Outside, the rest of the town cops are pulling up, including Jackie Wettington and Henry Morrison, who have abandoned their post at the Gas & Grocery by mutual consent. They join the other cops in a huddled worry-cluster off to one side and simply watch. Jackie sees Linda Everett's stricken face and folds Linda into her arms. Ernie Calvert joins them, yelling "So unnecessary! So completely unnecessary!" with tears streaming down his chubby cheeks.