Under the Dome: A Novel Read online

  “I’m afraid it is. They’ll release in from a B-52, and it’ll fly a preprogrammed course. I mean really programmed. Down to every ridge and dip, once it descends to target height. Those things are eerie. If it explodes and doesn’t break through, it means everyone in town just gets a bad scare—it’s going to sound like Armageddon. If it does break through, though—”

  Her hand had gone to her throat. “How much damage? Barbie, we have no firetrucks!”

  “I’m sure they’ll have fire equipment standing by. As to how much damage?” He shrugged. “The whole area will have to be evacuated, that’s for sure.”

  “Is it wise? Is what they’re planning wise?”

  “It’s a moot question, Mrs.—Brenda. They’ve made their decision. But it gets worse, I’m afraid.” And, seeing her expression: “For me, not the town. I’ve been promoted to Colonel. By Presidential order.”

  She rolled her eyes. “How nice for you.”

  “I’m supposed to declare martial law and basically take over Chester’s Mill. Won’t Jim Rennie enjoy hearing that?”

  She surprised him by bursting into laughter. And Barbie surprised himself by joining her.

  “You see my problem? The town doesn’t have to know about me borrowing an old Geiger counter, but they do need to know about the bunker-buster coming their way. Julia Shumway will spread the news if I don’t, but the town fathers ought to hear it from me. Because—”

  “I know why.” Thanks to the reddening sun, Brenda’s face had lost its pallor. But she was rubbing her arms absently. “If you’re to establish any authority here … which is what your superior wants you to do …”

  “I guess Cox is more like my colleague now,” Barbie said.

  She sighed. “Andrea Grinnell. We’ll take this to her. Then we’ll talk to Rennie and Andy Sanders together. At least we’ll outnumber them, three to two.”

  “Rose’s sister? Why?”

  “You don’t know she’s the town’s Third Selectman?” And when he shook his head: “Don’t look so chagrined. Many don’t, although she’s held the job for several years. She’s usually little more than a rubber-stamp for the two men—which means for Rennie, since Andy Sanders is a rubber-stamp himself—and she has … problems … but there’s a core of toughness there. Or was.”

  “What problems?”

  He thought she might keep that to herself too, but she didn’t. “Drug dependency. Pain pills. I don’t know how bad it is.”

  “And I suppose she gets her scrips filled at Sanders’s pharmacy.”

  “Yes. I know it’s not a perfect solution, and you’ll have to be very careful, but … Jim Rennie may be forced by simple expediency to accept your input for a while. Your actual leadership?” She shook her head. “He’ll wipe his bottom with any declaration of martial law, whether it’s signed by the President or not. I—”

  She ceased. Her eyes were looking past him, and widening.

  “Mrs. Perkins? Brenda? What is it?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, my God. ”

  Barbie turned to look, and was stunned to silence himself. The sun was going down red as it often did after warm, fair days unsullied by late showers. But never in his life had he seen a sunset like this one. He had an idea the only people who ever had were those in the vicinity of violent volcanic eruptions.

  No, he thought. Not even them. This is brand new.

  The declining sun wasn’t a ball. It was a huge red bowtie shape with a burning circular center. The western sky was smeared as if with a thin film of blood that shaded to orange as it climbed. The horizon was almost invisible through that blurry glare.

  “Good Christ, it’s like trying to look through a dirty windshield when you’re driving into the sun,” she said.

  And of course that was it, only the Dome was the windshield. It had begun to collect dust and pollen. Pollutants as well. And it would get worse.

  We’ll have to wash it, he thought, and visualized lines of volunteers with buckets and rags. Absurd. How were they going to wash it forty feet up? Or a hundred and forty? Or a thousand?

  “This has to end,” she whispered. “Call them and tell them to shoot the biggest missile they can, and damn the consequences. Because this has to end.”

  Barbie said nothing. Wasn’t sure he could have spoken even if he had something to say. That vast, dusty glare had stolen his words. It was like looking through a porthole into hell.

  NYUCK-NYUCK-NYUCK

  1

  Jim Rennie and Andy Sanders watched the weird sunset from the steps of the Bowie Funeral Home. They were due at the Town Hall for another “Emergency Assessment Meeting” at seven o’clock, and Big Jim wanted to be there early to prepare, but for now they stood where they were, watching the day die its strange, smeary death.

  “It’s like the end of the world.” Andy spoke in a low, awestruck voice.

  “Bull-pucky!” Big Jim said, and if his voice was harsh—even for him—it was because a similar thought had been going through his own mind. For the first time since the Dome had come down, it had occurred to him that the situation might be beyond their ability to manage—his ability to manage—and he rejected the idea furiously. “Do you see Christ the Lord coming down from the sky?”

  “No,” Andy admitted. What he saw were townspeople he’d known all his life standing in clumps along Main Street, not talking, only watching that strange sunset with their hands shading their eyes.

  “Do you see me ?” Big Jim persisted.

  Andy turned to him. “Sure I do,” he said. Sounding perplexed. “Sure I do, Big Jim.”

  “Which means I haven’t been Raptured,” Big Jim said. “I gave my heart to Jesus years ago, and if it was End Times, I wouldn’t be here. Neither would you, right?”

  “Guess not,” Andy said, but he felt doubtful. If they were Saved—washed in the Blood of the Lamb—why had they just been talking to Stewart Bowie about shutting down what Big Jim called “our little business”? And how had they gotten into such a business to start with? What did running a meth factory have to do with being Saved?

  If he asked Big Jim, Andy knew what the answer would be: the ends sometimes justify the means. The ends in this case had seemed admirable, once upon a time: the new Holy Redeemer Church (the old one had been little more than a clapboard shack with a wooden cross on top); the radio station that had saved only God knew how many souls; the ten percent they tithed—prudently, the contribution checks issued from a bank in the Cayman Islands—to the Lord Jesus Missionary Society, to help what Pastor Coggins liked to call “the little brown brothers.”

  But looking at that huge blurry sunset that seemed to suggest all human affairs were tiny and unimportant, Andy had to admit those things were no more than justifications. Without the cash income from the meth, his drugstore would have gone under six years ago. The same with the funeral home. The same—probably, although the man beside him would never admit it—with Jim Rennie’s Used Cars.

  “I know what you’re thinking, pal,” Big Jim said.

  Andy looked up at him timidly. Big Jim was smiling … but not the fierce one. This one was gentle, understanding. Andy smiled back, or tried to. He owed Big Jim a lot. Only now things like the drugstore and Claudie’s BMW seemed a lot less important. What good was a BMW, even one with self-parking and a voice-activated sound system, to a dead wife?

  When this is over and Dodee comes back, I’ll give the Beemer to her, Andy decided. It’s what Claudie would have wanted.

  Big Jim raised a blunt-fingered hand to the declining sun that seemed to be spreading across the western sky like a great poisoned egg. “You think all this is our fault, somehow. That God is punishing us for propping up the town when times were hard. That’s just not true, pal. This isn’t God’s work. If you wanted to say getting beat in Vietnam was God’s work—God’s warning that America was losing her spiritual way—I’d have to agree with you. If you were to say that nine-eleven was the Supreme Being’s response to our Supreme Court
telling little children they could no longer start their day with a prayer to the God Who made them, I’d have to go along. But God punishing Chester’s Mill because we didn’t want to end up just another moribund wide spot in the road, like Jay or Millinocket?” He shook his head. “Nosir. No.”

  “We also put some pretty good change in our own pockets,” Andy said timidly.

  This was true. They had done more than prop up their own businesses and extend a helping hand to the little brown brothers; Andy had his own account in the Cayman Islands. And for every dollar Andy had—or the Bowies, for that matter—he was willing to bet that Big Jim had put away three. Maybe even four.

  “‘The workman is worthy of his hire,’” Big Jim said in a pedantic but kindly tone. “Matthew ten-ten.” He neglected to cite the previous verse: Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses.

  He looked at his watch. “Speaking of work, pal, we better get moving. Got a lot to decide.” He started walking. Andy followed, not taking his eyes off the sunset, which was still bright enough to make him think of infected flesh. Then Big Jim stopped again.

  “Anyway, you heard Stewart—we’re shut down out there. ‘All done and buttoned up,’ as the little boy said after he made his first wee. He told the Chef himself.”

  “That guy,” Andy said dourly.

  Big Jim chuckled. “Don’t you worry about Phil. We’re shut down and we’re going to stay shut down until the crisis is over. In fact, this might be a sign that we’re supposed to close up shop forever. A sign from the Almighty.”

  “That would be good,” Andy said. But he had a depressing insight: if the Dome disappeared, Big Jim would change his mind, and when he did, Andy would go along. Stewart Bowie and his brother Fernald would, too. Eagerly. Partly because the money was so unbelievable—not to mention tax-free—and partly because they were in too deep. He remembered something some long-ago movie star had said: “By the time I discovered I didn’t like acting, I was too rich to quit.”

  “Don’t worry so much,” Big Jim said. “We’ll start moving the propane back into town in a couple of weeks, whether this Dome situation resolves itself or not. We’ll use the town sand-trucks. You can drive a standard shift, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” Andy said glumly.

  “And”—Big Jim brightened as an idea struck him—“we can use Stewie’s hearse! Then we can move some of the canisters even sooner!”

  Andy said nothing. He hated the idea that they had appropriated (that was Big Jim’s word for it) so much propane from various town sources, but it had seemed the safest way. They were manufacturing on a large scale, and that meant a lot of cooking and a lot of venting the bad gasses. Big Jim had pointed out that buying propane in large amounts could raise questions. Just as buying large amounts of the various over-the-counter drugs that went into the crap might be noticed and cause trouble.

  Owning a drugstore had helped with that, although the size of his orders for stuff like Robitussin and Sudafed had made Andy horribly nervous. He’d thought that would be their downfall, if their downfall came. He had never considered the huge cache of propane tanks behind the WCIK studio building until now.

  “By the way, we’ll have plenty of electricity in the Town Hall tonight.” Big Jim spoke with the air of one springing a pleasant surprise. “I had Randolph send my boy and his friend Frankie over to the hospital to grab one of their tanks for our gennie.”

  Andy looked alarmed. “But we already took—”

  “I know,” Rennie said soothingly. “I know we did. Don’t you worry about Cathy Russell, they’ve got enough for the time being.”

  “You could have gotten one from the radio station … there’s so much out there …”

  “This was closer,” Big Jim said. “And safer. Pete Randolph’s our guy, but that doesn’t mean I want him to know about our little business. Now or ever.”

  This made Andy even more certain that Big Jim didn’t really want to give up the factory.

  “Jim, if we start sneaking LP back into town, where will we say it was? Are we going to tell folks the Gas Fairy took it, then changed his mind and gave it back?”

  Rennie frowned. “Do you think this is funny, pal?”

  “No! I think it’s scary !”

  “I’ve got a plan. We’ll announce a town fuel supply depot, and ration propane from it as needed. Heating oil too, if we can figure out how to use it with the power out. I hate the idea of rationing—it’s un-American to the core—but this is like the story of the grasshopper and the ant, you know. There are cotton-pickers in town who’d use up everything in a month, then yell at us to take care of em at the first sign of a cold snap!”

  “You don’t really think this will go on for a month, do you?”

  “Of course not, but you know what the oldtimers say: hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

  Andy thought of pointing out that they’d already used a fair amount of the town’s supplies to make crystal meth, but he knew what Big Jim would say: How could we possibly have known?

  They couldn’t have, of course. Who in their right mind would ever have expected this sudden contraction of all resources? You planned for more than enough. It was the American way. Not nearly enough was an insult to the mind and the spirit.

  Andy said, “You’re not the only one who won’t like the idea of rationing.”

  “That’s why we have a police force. I know we all mourn Howie Perkins’s passing, but he’s with Jesus now and we’ve got Pete Randolph. Who’s going to be better for the town in this situation. Because he listens. ” He pointed a finger at Andy. “The people in a town like this—people everywhere, really—aren’t much more than children when it comes to their own self-interest. How many times have I said that?”

  “Lots,” Andy said, and sighed.

  “And what do you have to make children do?”

  “Eat their vegetables if they want their dessert.”

  “Yes! And sometimes that means cracking the whip.”

  “That reminds me of something else,” Andy said. “I was talking to Sammy Bushey out at Dinsmore’s field—one of Dodee’s friends? She said some of the cops were pretty rough out there. Darn rough. We might want to talk to Chief Randolph about that.”

  Jim frowned at him. “What did you expect, pal? Kid gloves? There was darn near a riot out there. We almost had a cotton-picking riot right here in Chester’s Mill !”

  “I know, you’re right, it’s just that—”

  “I know the Bushey girl. Knew her whole family. Drug users, car thieves, scofflaws, loan-dodgers and tax-dodgers. What we used to call poor white trash, before it became politically incorrect. Those are the people we have to watch out for right now. The very people. They’re the ones who’ll tear this town apart, given half a chance. Is that what you want?”

  “No, course not—”

  But Big Jim was in full flight. “Every town has its ants—which is good—and its grasshoppers, which aren’t so good but we can live with them because we understand them and can make them do what’s in their own best interests, even if we have to squeeze em a little. But every town also has its locusts, just like in the Bible, and that’s what people like the Busheys are. On them we’ve got to bring the hammer down. You might not like it and I might not like it, but personal freedom’s going to have to take a hike until this is over. And we’ll sacrifice, too. Aren’t we going to shut down our little business?”

  Andy didn’t want to point out that they really had no choice, since they had no way of shipping the stuff out of town anyway, but settled for a simple yes. He didn’t want to discuss things any further, and he dreaded the upcoming meeting, which might drag on until midnight. All he wanted was to go home to his empty house and have a stiff drink and then lie down and think about Claudie and cry himself to sleep.

  “What matters right now, pal, is keeping things on an even keel. That means law and order and oversight. Our oversight, because we’re not grasshoppers. We’re an
ts. Soldier ants.”

  Big Jim considered. When he spoke again, his tone was all business. “I’m rethinking our decision to let Food City continue on a business-as-usual basis. I’m not saying we’re going to shut it down—at least not yet—but we’ll have to watch it pretty closely over the next couple of days. Like a cotton-picking hawk. Same with the Gas and Grocery. And it might not be a bad idea if we were to appropriate some of the more perishable food for our own personal—”

  He stopped, squinting at the Town Hall steps. He didn’t believe what he saw and raised a hand to block the sunset. It was still there: Brenda Perkins and that gosh-darned troublemaker Dale Barbara. Not side by side, either. Sitting between them, and talking animatedly to Chief Perkins’s widow, was Andrea Grinnell, the Third Selectman. They appeared to be passing sheets of paper from hand to hand.

  Big Jim did not like this.

  At all.

  2

  He started forward, meaning to put a stop to the conversation no matter the subject. Before he could get half a dozen steps, a kid ran up to him. It was one of the Killian boys. There were about a dozen Killians living on a ramshackle chicken farm out by the Tarker’s Mills town line. None of the kids was very bright—which they came by honestly, considering the parents from whose shabby loins they had sprung—but all were members in good standing at Holy Redeemer; all Saved, in other words. This one was Ronnie … at least Rennie thought so, but it was hard to be sure. They all had the same bullet heads, bulging brows, and beaky noses.

  The boy was wearing a tattered WCIK tee-shirt and carrying a note. “Hey, Mr. Rennie!” he said. “Gorry, I been lookin all over town for you!”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have time to talk right now, Ronnie,” Big Jim said. He was still looking at the trio sitting on the Town Hall steps. The Three Gosh-Darn Stooges. “Maybe tomor—”

  “It’s Richie, Mr. Rennie. Ronnie’s my brother.”

  “Richie. Of course. Now if you’ll excuse me.” Big Jim strode on.