Under the Dome, Page 74

  Rennie could say he was sorry all he wanted, but in the instant before he brought the heel of his shoe--and all of his two hundred and thirty pounds--down on Rusty's clenched left hand, Rusty saw a different motive poking out the front of the Second Selectman's gabardine trousers. He was enjoying this, and not just in a cerebral sense.

  Then the heel was pressing and grinding: hard, harder, hardest. Big Jim's face was clenched with effort. Sweat stood out under his eyes. His tongue was clamped between his teeth.

  Don't scream, Rusty thought. It'll bring Ginny, and then she'll be in the cooking pot, too. Also, he wants you to. Don't give him the satisfaction.

  But when he heard the first snap from under Big Jim's heel, he did scream. He couldn't help it.

  There was another snap. Then a third.

  Big Jim stepped back, satisfied. "Get him on his feet and take him to jail. Let him visit with his friend."

  Freddy was examining Rusty's hand, which was already swelling. Three of the four fingers were bent badly out of true. "Busted," he said with great satisfaction.

  Ginny appeared in the lounge doorway, her eyes huge. "What in God's name are you doing?"

  "Arresting this bastard for extortion, criminal withholding, and attempted murder," Freddy Denton said as Carter hauled Rusty Everett to his feet. "And that's just a start. He resisted and we subdued him. Please step aside, ma'am."

  "You're nuts!" Ginny cried. "Rusty, your hand !"

  "I'm all right. Call Linda. Tell her these thugs--"

  He got no further. Carter seized him by the neck and ran him out the door with his head bent down. In his ear Carter whispered: "If I was sure that old guy knew as much about doctorin as you, I'd kill you myself."

  All this in four days and change, Rusty marveled as Carter forced him down the hallway, staggering and bent almost double by the grip on his neck. His left hand was no longer a hand, only a bellowing chunk of pain below his wrist. Just four days and change.

  He wondered if the leatherheads--whatever or whoever they might be--were enjoying the show.

  10

  It was late afternoon before Linda finally came across The Mill's librarian. Lissa was biking back toward town along Route 117. She said she'd been talking to the sentries out at the Dome, trying to glean further information about Visitors Day.

  "They're not supposed to schmooze with the townies, but some will," she said. "Especially if you leave the top three buttons on your blouse undone. That seems to be a real conversation-starter. With the Army guys, anyway. The Marines ... I think I could take off all my clothes and dance the Macarena and they still wouldn't say boo. Those boys seem immune to sex appeal." She smiled. "Not that I'll ever be mistaken for Kate Winslet."

  "Did you pick up any interesting gossip?"

  "Nope." Lissa was straddling her bike, and looking in at Linda through the passenger window. "They don't know squat. But they're awfully concerned about us; I was touched by that. And they're hearing as many rumors as we are. One of them asked me if it was true that over a hundred people had committed suicide already."

  "Can you get in the car with me for a minute?"

  Lissa's smile broadened. "Am I being arrested?"

  "There's something I want to talk to you about."

  Lissa put down the kickstand of her bike and got in, first moving Linda's citation clipboard and a nonfunctioning radar gun out of the way. Linda told her about the clandestine visit to the funeral home and what they'd found there, then about the proposed meeting at the parsonage. Lissa's response was immediate and vehement.

  "I'll be there--you just try to keep me away."

  The radio cleared its throat then, and Stacey came on. "Unit Four, Unit Four. Break-break-break."

  Linda grabbed the mike. It wasn't Rusty she was thinking of; it was the girls. "This is Four, Stacey. Go."

  What Stacey Moggin said when she came back changed Linda's unease to outright terror. "I've got something bad to tell you, Lin. I'd tell you to brace yourself, but I don't think you can brace yourself for a thing like this. Rusty's been arrested."

  "What?" Linda nearly screamed, but only to Lissa; she didn't depress the SEND button on the side of the mike.

  "They've put him downstairs in the Coop with Barbie. He's all right, but it looks to me like he's got a broken hand--he was holding it against his chest and it was all swollen." She lowered her voice. "It happened resisting arrest, they said. Over."

  This time Linda remembered to key the mike. "I'll be right there. Tell him I'm coming. Over."

  "I can't," Stacey said. "No one's allowed down there anymore except for officers on a special list ... and I'm not one of them. There's a whole basket of charges, including attempted murder and accessory to murder. Take it easy coming back to town. You won't be allowed to see him, so there's no sense wrecking your shop on the way--"

  Linda keyed the mike three times: break-break-break. Then she said, "I'll see him, all right."

  But she didn't. Chief Peter Randolph, looking freshly rested from his nap, met her at the top of the PD steps and told her he'd need her badge and gun; as Rusty's wife, she was also under suspicion of undermining the lawful town government and fomenting insurrection.

  Fine, she wanted to tell him. Arrest me, put me downstairs with my husband. But then she thought of the girls, who would be at Marta's now, waiting to be picked up, wanting to tell her all about their day at school. She also thought of the meeting at the parsonage that night. She couldn't attend that if she was in a cell, and the meeting was now more important than ever.

  Because if they were going to break one prisoner out tomorrow night, why not two?

  "Tell him I love him," Linda said, unbuckling her belt and sliding the holster off it. She hadn't really cared for the weight of the gun, anyway. Crossing the little ones on the way to school, and telling the middle-school kids to ditch both their cigarettes and their foul mouths ... those things were more her forte.

  "I will convey that message, Mrs. Everett."

  "Has anyone looked at his hand? I heard from someone that his hand might be broken."

  Randolph frowned. "Who told you that?"

  "I don't know who called me. He didn't identify himself. It was one of our guys, I think, but the reception out there on 117 isn't very good."

  Randolph considered this, decided not to pursue it. "Rusty's hand is fine," he said. "And our guys aren't your guys anymore. Go on home. I'm sure we'll have questions for you later."

  She felt tears and fought them back. "And what am I supposed to tell my girls? Am I supposed to tell them their daddy is in jail? You know Rusty's one of the good guys; you know that. God, he was the one who diagnosed your hot gallbladder last year!"

  "Can't help you much there, Mrs. Everett," Randolph said--his days of calling her Linda seemed to be behind him. "But I suggest you don't tell them that Daddy conspired with Dale Barbara in the murder of Brenda Perkins and Lester Coggins--the others we're not sure of, those were clearly sex crimes and Rusty may not have known about them."

  "That's insane!"

  Randolph might not have heard. "He also tried to kill Selectman Rennie by withholding vital medication. Luckily, Big Jim had the foresight to conceal a couple of officers nearby." He shook his head. "Threatening to withhold lifesaving medication from a man who's made himself sick caring for this town. That's your good guy; that's your goddam good guy."

  She was in trouble here, and knew it. She left before she could make it worse. The five hours before the meeting at the Congo parsonage stretched long before her. She could think of nowhere to go, nothing to do.

  Then she did.

  11

  Rusty's hand was far from fine. Even Barbie could see that, and there were three empty cells between them. "Rusty--anything I can do?"

  Rusty managed a smile. "Not unless you've got a couple of aspirin you can toss me. Darvocet would be even better."

  "Fresh out. They didn't give you anything?"

  "No, but the pain's down a bit.
I'll survive." This talk was a good deal braver than he actually felt; the pain was very bad, and he was about to make it worse. "I've got to do something about these fingers, though."

  "Good luck."

  For a wonder, none of the fingers was broken, although a bone in his hand was. It was a metacarpal, the fifth. The only thing he could do about that was tear strips from his tee-shirt and use them as a splint. But first ...

  He grasped his left index finger, which was dislocated at the proximal interphalangeal joint. In the movies, this stuff always happened fast. Fast was dramatic. Unfortunately, fast could make things worse instead of better. He applied slow, steady, increasing pressure. The pain was gruesome; he felt it all the way up to the hinges of his jaw. He could hear the finger creaking like the hinge of a door that hasn't been opened in a long time. Somewhere, both close by and in another country, he glimpsed Barbie standing at the door of his cell and watching.

  Then, suddenly, the finger was magically straight again and the pain was less. In that one, anyway. He sat down on the bunk, gasping like a man who has just run a race.

  "Done?" Barbie asked.

  "Not quite. I also have to fix my fuck-you finger. I may need it." Rusty grasped his second finger and began again. And again, just when it seemed the pain could get no worse, the dislocated joint slipped back into place. Now there was just the matter of his pinkie, which was sticking out as if he meant to make a toast.

  And I would if I could, he thought. "To the most fucked-up day in history." In the history of Eric Everett, at least.

  He began to wrap the finger. This also hurt, and for this there was no quick fix.

  "What'd you do?" Barbie asked, then snapped his fingers twice, sharply. He pointed at the ceiling, then cupped one hand to his ear. Did he actually know the Coop was bugged, or only suspect it? Rusty decided it didn't matter. It would be best to behave as if it were, although it was hard to believe anyone in this fumble-bunch had thought of it yet.

  "Made the mistake of trying to get Big Jim to step down," Rusty said. "I have no doubt they'll add a dozen or so other charges, but basically I got jailed for telling him to quit pushing so hard or he'd have a heart attack."

  This, of course, ignored the Coggins stuff, but Rusty thought that might be just as well for his continued good health.

  "How's the food in here?"

  "Not bad," Barbie said. "Rose brought me lunch. You want to watch out for the water, though. It can be a trifle salty."

  He forked the first two fingers of his right hand, pointed them at his eyes, then pointed pointed at his own mouth: watch.

  Rusty nodded.

  Tomorrow night, Barbie mouthed.

  I know, Rusty mouthed back. Making the exaggerated syllables caused his lips to crack open and start bleeding again.

  Barbie mouthed We ... need ... a ... safe ... place.

  Thanks to Joe McClatchey and his friends, Rusty thought he had that part covered.

  12

  Andy Sanders had a seizure.

  It was inevitable, really; he was unused to glass and he'd been smoking a lot of it. He was in the WCIK studio, listening to the Our Daily Bread symphony soar through "How Great Thou Art" and conducting along with it. He saw himself flying down eternal violin strings.

  Chef was somewhere with the bong, but he'd left Andy a supply of fat hybrid cigarettes he called fry-daddies. "You want to be careful with these, Sanders," he said. "They are dynamite. 'For thee not used to drinking must be gentle.' First Timothy. It also applies to fries."

  Andy nodded solemnly, but smoked like a demon once Chef was gone: two of the daddies, one after the other. He puffed until they were nothing but hot nubs that burned his fingers. The roasting cat-pee smell of the glass was already rising to the top of his aromatherapy hit parade. He was halfway through the third daddy and still conducting like Leonard Bernstein when he sucked in a particularly deep lungful and instantly blacked out. He fell to the floor and lay twitching in a river of sacred music. Spitfoam oozed between his clenched teeth. His half-open eyes rolled around in their sockets, seeing things that weren't there. At least, not yet.

  Ten minutes later he was awake again, and lively enough to go flying along the path between the studio and the long red supply building out back.

  "Chef!" he bawled. "Chef, where are you? THEY'RE COMING!"

  Chef Bushey stepped from the supply building's side door. His hair stood up from his head in greasy quills. He was dressed in a filthy pair of pajama pants, pee-stained at the crotch and grass-stained at the bottoms. Printed with cartoon frogs saying RIBBIT, they hung precariously from the bony flanges of his hips, displaying a fluff of pubic hair in front and the crack of his ass in back. He had his AK-47 in one hand. On the stock he had carefully painted the words GOD'S WARRIOR. The garage door opener was in his other hand. He put God's Warrior down but not God's Door Opener. He grasped Andy's shoulders and gave him a smart shake.

  "Stop it, Sanders, you're hysterical."

  "They're coming! The bitter men! Just like you said!"

  Chef considered this. "Did someone call and give you a heads-up?"

  "No, it was a vision! I blacked out and had a vision!"

  Chef's eyes widened. Suspicion gave way to respect. He looked from Andy to Little Bitch Road, and then back to Andy again. "What did you see? How many? Is it all of them, or just a few, like before?"

  "I ... I ... I ..."

  Chef shook him again, but much more gently this time. "Calm down, Sanders. You're in the Lord's army now, and--"

  "A Christian soldier!"

  "Right, right, right. And I'm your superior. So report."

  "They're coming in two trucks."

  "Only two?"

  "Yes."

  "Orange?"

  "Yes!"

  Chef hitched up his pjs (they subsided to their former position almost immediately) and nodded. "Town trucks. Probably those same three dumbwits--the Bowies and Mr. Chicken."

  "Mr.--?"

  "Killian, Sanders, who else? He smokes the glass but doesn't understand the purpose of the glass. He's a fool. They're coming for more propane."

  "Should we hide? Just hide and let them take it?"

  "That's what I did before. But not this time. I'm done hiding and letting people take things. Star Wormwood has blazed. It's time for men of God to hoist their flag. Are you with me?"

  And Andy--who under the Dome had lost everything that had ever meant anything to him--did not hesitate. "Yes!"

  "To the end, Sanders?"

  "To the end!"

  "Where-at did you put your gun?"

  As best as Andy could recollect, it was in the studio, leaning against the poster of Pat Robertson with his arm around the late Lester Coggins.

  "Let's get it," Chef said, picking up GOD'S WARRIOR and checking the clip. "And from now on you carry it with you, have you got that?"

  "Okay."

  "Box of ammo in there?"

  "Yep." Andy had toted one of these crates in just an hour ago. At least he thought it had been an hour ago; fry-daddies had a way of bending time at the edges.

  "Just a minute," Chef said. He went down the side of the supply building to the box of Chinese grenades and brought back three. He gave two to Andy and told him to put them in his pockets. Chef hung the third grenade from the muzzle of GOD'S WARRIOR by the pull-ring. "Sanders, I was told that you get seven seconds after you yank the pin to get rid of these cocksuckers, but when I tried one in the gravel-pit back yonder, it was more like four. You can't trust your Oriental races. Remember that."

  Andy said he would.

  "All right, come on. Let's get your weapon."

  Hesitantly, Andy asked: "Are we going to take them out?"

  Chef looked surprised. "Not unless we have to, no."

  "Good," Andy said. In spite of everything, he didn't really want to hurt anyone.

  "But if they force the issue, we'll do what's necessary. Do you understand that?"

  "Yes," Andy said.

/>   Chef clapped him on the shoulder.

  13

  Joe asked his mother if Benny and Norrie could spend the night. Claire said it was okay with her if it was okay with their parents. It would, in fact, be something of a relief. After their adventure on Black Ridge, she liked the idea of having them under her eye. They could make popcorn on the woodstove and continue the raucous game of Monopoly they'd begun an hour ago. It was too raucous, actually; their chatter and catcalls had a nervy, whistling-past-the-graveyard quality she didn't care for.

  Benny's mother agreed, and--somewhat to her surprise--so did Norrie's. "Good deal," Joanie Calvert said. "I've been wanting to get schnockered ever since this happened. Looks like tonight's my chance. And Claire? Tell that girl to hunt up her grandfather tomorrow and give him a kiss."

  "Who's her grandfather?"

  "Ernie. You know Ernie, don't you? Everybody knows Ernie.

  He worries about her. So do I, sometimes. That skateboard." There was a shudder in Joanie's voice.

  "I'll tell her."

  Claire had no more than hung up when there was a knock at the door. At first she didn't know who the middle-aged woman with the pale, strained face was. Then she realized it was Linda Everett, who ordinarily worked the school-crossing beat and ticketed cars that overstayed their welcome in the two-hour parking zones on Main Street. And she wasn't middle-aged at all. She just looked that way now.

  "Linda!" Claire said. "What's wrong? Is it Rusty? Has something happened to Rusty?" She was thinking of radiation ... at least in the front of her mind. In the back, even worse ideas slithered around.

  "He's been arrested."

  The Monopoly game in the dining room had ceased. The participants now stood together in the living room doorway, gazing at Linda solemnly.

  "It's a whole laundry list of charges, including criminal complicity in the murders of Lester Coggins and Brenda Perkins."

  "No!" Benny cried.

  Claire thought of telling them to leave the room and decided it would be hopeless. She thought she knew why Linda was here, and understood it, but still hated her a little for coming. And Rusty, too, for getting the kids involved. Except they were all involved, weren't they? Under the Dome, involvement was no longer a matter of choice.

  "He got in Rennie's way," Linda said. "That's what it's really about. That's what it's all about now, as far as Big Jim's concerned: who's in his way and who isn't. He's forgotten entirely what a terrible situation we're in here. No, it's worse than that. He's using the situation."