Under the Dome, Page 65

  Rusty shook his head. "Ginny and Twitch are going to be on their own at least until noon ... although with the new guy to help them out, I think they'll be okay. Thurston's kind of New Age-y, but he's good. I'm going over to Claire McClatchey's. I need to talk to those kids, and I need to go out to where they got the radiation spike on the Geiger counter."

  "What do I tell people who ask where you are?"

  Rusty considered this. "The truth, I guess. Some of it, anyway. Say I'm investigating a possible Dome generator. That might make Rennie think twice about whatever next step he's planning."

  "And when I'm asked about the location? Because I will be."

  "Say you don't know, but you think it's on the western side of town."

  "Black Ridge is north."

  "Yep. If Rennie tells Randolph to send out some of his Mounties, I want them to go to the wrong place. If someone calls you on it later, just say you were tired and must have gotten mixed up. And listen, hon--before you go in to the PD, make a list of people who may believe Barbie's innocent of the murders." Thinking again, Us and them. "We need to talk to those people before the town meeting tomorrow. Very discreetly."

  "Rusty, are you sure about this? Because after the fire last night, this whole town is going to be on the lookout for the Friends of Dale Barbara."

  "Am I sure? Yes. Do I like it? Most assuredly not."

  She looked up again at the yellow-tinged sky, then at the two oaks in their front yard, the leaves hanging limp and moveless, their bright colors fading to drab brown. She sighed. "If Rennie framed Barbara, then he probably had the newspaper burned down. You know that, right?"

  "I do."

  "And if Jackie can get Barbara out of jail, where will she put him? Where in town is safe?"

  "I'll have to think about that."

  "If you can find the generator and turn it off, all this I Spy crap becomes unnecessary."

  "You pray that happens."

  "I will. What about radiation? I don't want you coming down with leukemia, or something."

  "I have an idea about that."

  "Should I ask?"

  He smiled. "Probably not. It's pretty crazy."

  She twined her fingers through his. "Be careful."

  He kissed her lightly. "You too."

  They looked at Jackie pushing the girls on the swings. They had a lot to be careful for. All the same, Rusty thought that risk was coming into his life as a major factor. If, that was, he wanted to be able to continue looking at his reflection when he took his morning shave.

  2

  Horace the Corgi liked peoplefood.

  In fact, Horace the Corgi loved peoplefood. Being a little over-weight (not to mention a little gray about the muzzle in these latter years), he wasn't supposed to have it, and Julia had been good about stopping the table feeding after the vet had told her bluntly that her generosity was shortening her housemate's life. That conversation had taken place sixteen months ago; since then Horace had been restricted to Bil-Jac and the occasional dietetic dog treat. The treats resembled Styrofoam packing-poppers, and judging from the reproachful way Horace looked at her before eating them, she guessed they probably tasted like packing-poppers, too. But she stuck to her guns: no more fried chicken skin, no more Cheez Doodles, no more bites of her morning doughnut.

  This limited Horace's intake of verboten comestibles, but did not entirely end it; the imposed diet simply reduced him to foraging, which Horace rather enjoyed, returning him as it did to the hunting nature of his foxy forebears. His morning and evening walks were especially rich in culinary delights. It was amazing what people left in the gutters along Main Street and West Street, which formed his usual walkie-walk route. There were french fries, potato chips, discarded peanut butter crackers, the occasional ice cream bar wrapper with some chocolate still adhering to it. Once he came upon an entire Table Talk pie. It was out of its dish and in his stomach before you could say cholesterol.

  He didn't succeed in snarking all the goodies he came upon; sometimes Julia saw what he was after and jerked him along on his leash before he could ingest it. But he got a lot, because Julia often walked him with a book or a folded copy of the New York Times in one hand. Being ignored in favor of the Times wasn't always good--when he wanted a thorough belly-scratch, for instance--but during walkies, ignorance was bliss. For small yellow Corgis, ignorance meant snacks.

  He was being ignored this morning. Julia and the other woman--the one who owned this house, because her smell was all over it, especially in the vicinity of the room where humans went to drop their scat and mark their territory--were talking. Once the other woman cried, and Julia hugged her.

  "I'm better, but not all better," Andrea said. They were in the kitchen. Horace could smell the coffee they were drinking. Cold coffee, not hot. He could also smell pastries. The kind with icing. "I still want it." If she was talking about pastries with icing, so did Horace.

  "The craving may go on for a long time," Julia said, "and that's not even the important part. I salute your courage, Andi, but Rusty was right--cold turkey is foolish and dangerous. You're damn lucky you haven't had a convulsion."

  "For all I know, I have." Andrea drank some of her coffee. Horace heard the slurp. "I've been having some damned vivid dreams. One was about a fire. A big one. On Halloween."

  "But you're better."

  "A little. I'm starting to think I can make it. Julia, you're welcome to stay here with me, but I think you could find a better place. The smell--"

  "We can do something about the smell. We'll get a battery-powered fan from Burpee's. If room and board is a firm offer--one that includes Horace--I'll take you up on it. No one trying to kick an addiction should have to do it on her own."

  "I don't think there's any other way, hon."

  "You know what I mean. Why did you do it?"

  "Because for the first time since I got elected, this town might need me. And because Jim Rennie threatened to withhold my pills if I objected to his plans."

  Horace tuned the rest of this out. He was more interested in a smell wafting to his sensitive nose from the space between the wall and one end of the couch. It was on this couch that Andrea liked to sit in better (if considerably more medicated) days, sometimes watching shows like The Hunted Ones (a clever sequel to Lost ) and Dancing with the Stars, sometimes a movie on HBO. On movie nights she often had microwave popcorn. She'd put the bowl on the endtable. Because stoners are rarely neat, there was a scattering of popcorn down there below the table. This was what Horace had smelled.

  Leaving the women to their blah, he worked his way under the little table and into the gap. It was a narrow space, but the endtable formed a natural bridge and he was a fairly narrow dog, especially since going on the Corgi version of WeightWatchers. The first kernels were just beyond the VADER file, lying there in its manila envelope. Horace was actually standing on his mistress's name (printed in the late Brenda Perkins's neat hand) and hoovering up the first bits of a surprisingly rich treasure trove, when Andrea and Julia walked back into the living room.

  A woman said, Take that to her.

  Horace looked up, his ears pricking. That was not Julia or the other woman; it was a deadvoice. Horace, like all dogs, heard deadvoices quite often, and sometimes saw their owners. The dead were all around, but living people saw them no more than they could smell most of the ten thousand aromas that surrounded them every minute of every day.

  Take that to Julia, she needs it, it's hers.

  That was ridiculous. Julia would never eat anything that had been in his mouth, Horace knew this from long experience. Even if he pushed it out with his snout she wouldn't eat it. It was peoplefood, yes, but now it was also floorfood.

  Not the popcorn. The--

  "Horace?" Julia asked in that sharp voice that said he was being bad--as in Oh you bad dog, you know better, blah-blah-blah. "What are you doing back there? Come out."

  Horace threw it in reverse. He gave her his most charming grin--gosh, Julia
, how I love you--hoping that no popcorn was stuck to the end of his nose. He'd gotten a few pieces, but he sensed the real motherlode had escaped him.

  "Have you been foraging?"

  Horace sat, looking up at her with the proper expression of adoration. Which he did feel; he loved Julia very much.

  "A better question would be what have you been foraging?" She bent to look into the gap between the couch and the wall.

  Before she could, the other woman began to make a gagging noise. She wrapped her arms around herself in an effort to stop a shivering fit, but was unsuccessful. Her smell changed, and Horace knew she was going to yark. He watched closely. Sometimes peopleyark had good things in it.

  "Andi?" Julia asked. "Are you okay?"

  Stupid question, Horace thought. Can't you smell her? But that was a stupid question, too. Julia could hardly smell herself when she was sweaty.

  "Yes. No. I shouldn't have eaten that raisin bun. I'm going to--" She hurried out of the room. To add to the smells coming from the piss-and-scat place, Horace assumed. Julia followed. For a moment Horace debated squeezing back under the table, but he smelled worry on Julia and hurried at her heels instead.

  He had forgotten all about the deadvoice.

  3

  Rusty called Claire McClatchey from the car. It was early, but she answered on the first ring, and he wasn't surprised. No one in Chester's Mill was getting much sleep these days, at least not without pharmacological assistance.

  She promised to have Joe and his friends at the house by eight thirty at the latest, would pick them up herself, if necessary. Lowering her voice, she said, "I think Joe is crushing on the Calvert girl."

  "He'd be a fool not to," Rusty said.

  "Will you have to take them out there?"

  "Yes, but not into a high radiation zone. I promise you that, Mrs. McClatchey."

  "Claire. If I'm going to allow my son to go with you to an area where the animals apparently commit suicide, I think we should be on a first-name basis."

  "You get Benny and Norrie to your house and I promise to take care of them on the field trip. That work for you?"

  Claire said it did. Five minutes after hanging up on her, Rusty was turning off an eerily deserted Motton Road and onto Drummond Lane, a short street lined with Eastchester's nicest homes. The nicest of the nice was the one with BURPEE on the mailbox. Rusty was soon in the Burpee kitchen, drinking coffee (hot; the Burpee generator was still working) with Romeo and his wife, Michela. Both of them looked pale and grim. Rommie was dressed, Michela still in her housecoat.

  "You t'ink dat guy Barbie really killed Bren?" Rommie asked. "Because if he did, my friend, I'm gonna kill him myself."

  Michela put a hand on his arm. "You ain't that dumb, honey."

  "I don't think so," Rusty said. "I think he was framed. But if you tell people I said that, we could all be in trouble."

  "Rommie always loved that woman." Michela was smiling, but there was frost in her voice. "More than me, I sometimes think."

  Rommie neither confirmed nor denied this--seemed, in fact, not to hear it at all. He leaned toward Rusty, his brown eyes intent. "What you talking 'bout, doc? Framed how?"

  "Nothing I want to go into now. I'm here on other business. And I'm afraid this is also secret."

  "Then I don't want to hear it," Michela said. She left the room, taking her coffee cup with her.

  "Ain't gonna be no lovin from dat woman tonight," Rommie said.

  "I'm sorry."

  Rommie shrugged. "I got 'nother one, crosstown. Misha knows, although she don't let on. Tell me what your other bi'ness is, doc."

  "Some kids think they may have found what's generating the Dome. They're young but smart. I trust them. They had a Geiger counter, and they got a radiation spike out on Black Ridge Road. Not into the danger zone, but they didn't get all that close."

  "Close to what? What'd they see?"

  "A flashing purple light. You know where the old orchard is?"

  "Hell, yeah. The McCoy place. I used to take girls parkin dere. You can see the whole town. I had dis ole Willys...." He looked momentarily wistful. "Well, never mind. Just a flashin light?"

  "They also came across a lot of dead animals--some deer, a bear. Looked to the kids like they committed suicide."

  Rommie regarded him gravely. "I'm going wit you."

  "That's fine ... up to a point. One of us has got to go all the way, and that should be me. But I need a radiation suit."

  "What you got in mind, doc?"

  Rusty told him. When he had finished, Rommie produced a package of Winstons and offered the pack across the table.

  "My favorite OPs," Rusty said, and took one. "So what do you think?"

  "Oh, I can help you," Rommie said, lighting them up. "I got ever-thin in dat store of mine, as everyone in dis town well know." He pointed his cigarette at Rusty. "But you ain't gonna want any pictures of yourself in the paper, because gonna look damn funny, you."

  "Not worried about dat, me," Rusty said. "Newspaper burned down last night."

  "I heard," Rommie said. "Dat guy Barbara again. His friens."

  "Do you believe that?"

  "Oh, I'm a believin soul. When Bush said there was nukes an such in Iraq, I believed dat. I tell people, 'He's the guy who knows.' Also b'lieve dat Oswal' act alone, me."

  From the other room, Michela called: "Stop talking that fake French shit."

  Rommie gave Rusty a grin that said, You see what I have to put up with. "Yes, my dear," he said, and with absolutely no trace of his Lucky Pierre accent. Then he faced Rusty again. "Leave your car here. We'll take my van. More space. Drop me off at the store, then get those kids. I'll put together your radiation suit. But as for gloves ... I don't know."

  "We've got lead-lined gloves in the X-ray room closet at the hospital. Go all the way up to the elbow. I can grab one of the aprons--"

  "Good idea, hate to see you risk your sperm count--"

  "Also there might be a pair or two of the lead-lined goggles the techs and radiologists used to wear back in the seventies. Although they could have been thrown out. What I'm hoping is that the radiation count doesn't go much higher than the last reading the kids got, which was still in the green."

  "Except you said they didn't get all dat close."

  Rusty sighed. "If the needle on that Geiger counter hits eight hundred or a thousand counts per second, my continued fertility is going to be the least of my worries."

  Before they left, Michela--now dressed in a short skirt and a spectacularly cozy sweater--swept back into the kitchen and berated her husband for a fool. He'd get them in trouble. He'd done it before and would do it again. Only this might be worse trouble than he knew.

  Rommie took her in his arms and spoke to her in rapid French. She replied in the same language, spitting the words. He responded. She beat a fist twice against his shoulder, then cried and kissed him. Outside, Rommie turned to Rusty apologetically and shrugged.

  "She can't help it," he said. "She's got the soul of a poet and the emotional makeup of a junkyard dog."

  4

  When Rusty and Romeo Burpee got to the department store, Toby Manning was already there, waiting to open up and serve the public, if that was Rommie's pleasure. Petra Searles, who worked across the street in the drugstore, was sitting with him. They were in lawn chairs with tags reading END OF SUMMER BLOWOUT SALE hanging from the arms.

  "Sure you don't want to tell me about this radiation suit you're going to build before"--Rusty looked at his watch--"ten o'clock?"

  "Better not," Rommie said. "You'd call me crazy. Go on, Doc. Get those gloves and goggles and the apron. Talk to the kids. Gimme some time."

  "We opening, boss?" Toby asked when Rommie got out.

  "Dunno. Maybe this afternoon. Gonna be a l'il busy dis mornin, me."

  Rusty drove away. He was on Town Common Hill before he realized that both Toby and Petra had been wearing blue armbands.

  5

  He found gloves, a
prons, and one pair of lead-lined goggles in the back of the X-ray closet, about two seconds before he was ready to give up. The goggles' strap was busted, but he was sure Rommie could staple it back together. As a bonus, he didn't have to explain to anyone what he was doing. The whole hospital seemed to be sleeping.

  He went back out, sniffed at the air--flat, with an unpleasant smoky undertang--and looked west, at the hanging black smear where the missiles had struck. It looked like a skin tumor. He knew he was concentrating on Barbie and Big Jim and the murders because they were the human element, things he sort of understood. But ignoring the Dome would be a mistake--a potentially catastrophic one. It had to go away, and soon, or his patients with asthma and COPD were going to start having problems. And they were really just the canaries in the coal mine.

  That nicotine-stained sky.

  "Not good," he muttered, and threw his salvage into the back of the van. "Not good at all."

  6

  All three children were at the McClatchey house when he got there, and oddly subdued for kids who might be acclaimed national heroes by the end of this Wednesday in October, if fortune favored them.

  "You guys ready?" Rusty asked, more heartily than he felt. "Before we go out there we have to stop at Burpee's, but that shouldn't take l--"

  "They've got something to tell you first," Claire said. "I wish to God they didn't. This just keeps getting worse and worse. Would you like a glass of orange juice? We're trying to drink it up before it goes spunky."

  Rusty held his thumb and forefinger close together to indicate just a little. He'd never been much of an OJ man, but he wanted her out of the room and sensed she wanted to go. She looked pale and sounded scared. He didn't think this was about what the kids had found out on Black Ridge; this was something else.

  Just what I need, he thought.

  When she was gone he said, "Spill it."

  Benny and Norrie turned to Joe. He sighed, brushed his hair off his forehead, sighed again. There was little resemblance between this serious young adolescent and the sign-waving, hell-raising kid in Alden Dinsmore's field three days ago. His face was as pale as his mother's, and a few pimples--maybe his first--had appeared on his forehead. Rusty had seen such sudden outbreaks before. They were stress-pimples.