Under the Dome Read online

  "If people only go once or twice, they should be okay." Rose had confirmed this for herself, on the Internet. She had also discovered that safety when it came to radiation depended on the strength of the rays, but saw no sense in worrying them about things they couldn't control. "The important thing is to limit exposure ... and Joe says the belt isn't wide."

  "Joey's mom won't want to come," Norrie said.

  Rose sighed. This she knew. Visitors Day was a mixed blessing. It might cover their retreat, but those with relatives on the other side would want to see them. Maybe McClatchey will lose the lottery, she thought.

  Up ahead was Jim Rennie's Used Cars, with its big sign: YOU'LL LUV THE FEELIN' WHEN BIG JIM IS DEALIN'! A$K U$ 4 CREDIT!

  "Remember--" Ernie began.

  "I know," Rose said. "If someone's there, just turn around in front and head back to town."

  But at Rennie's all the RESERVED FOR EMPLOYEE slots were empty, the showroom was deserted, and there was a whiteboard bearing the message CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE hanging on the main door. Rose drove around back in a hurry. Out here were ranks of cars and trucks with signs in the windows bearing prices and slogans like GREAT VALUE and CLEAN AS A WHISTLE and HEY LOOK ME OVER (with the Os turned into sexy long-lashed girl-eyes). These were the battered workhorses in Big Jim's stable, nothing like the snazzy Detroit and German thoroughbreds out front. At the far end of the lot, ranked against the chainlink fence separating Big Jim's property from a trash-littered patch of second-growth woods, was a line of phone company vans, some still bearing AT&T logos.

  "Those," Ernie said, reaching behind his seat. He brought out a long thin strip of metal.

  "That's a slim jim," Rose said, amused in spite of her nerves. "Why would you have a slim jim, Ernie?"

  "From when I was still working at Food City. You'd be surprised how many people lock their keys in their cars."

  "How will you get it started, Grampa?" Norrie asked.

  Ernie smiled feebly. "I'll figure somethin out. Stop here, Rose."

  He got out and trotted to the first van, moving with surprising nimbleness for a man approaching seventy. He peered through the window, shook his head, and went to the next in line. Then the third--but that one had a flat tire. After a look into the fourth, he turned back to Rose and gave her a thumbs-up. "Go on, Rose. Buzz."

  Rose had an idea that Ernie didn't want his granddaughter seeing him use the slim jim. She was touched by that, and drove back around to the front without any further talk. Here she stopped again. "You okay with this, sweetie?"

  "Yes," Norrie said, getting out. "If he can't get it started, we'll just walk back to town."

  "It's almost three miles. Can he do that?"

  Norrie's face was pale, but she managed a smile. "Grampa could walk me right into the ground. He does four miles a day, says it keeps his joints oiled. Go on, now, before someone comes and sees you."

  "You're a brave girl," Rose said.

  "I don't feel brave."

  "Brave people never do, honey."

  Rose drove back toward town. Norrie watched until she was out of sight, then began to do rails and lazy diamonds in the front lot. The hottop had a slight slope, so she only had to piss-pedal one way ... although she was so wired she felt like she could push the board all the way up Town Common Hill and not feel it. Hell, right now she could probably ass-knife and not feel it. And if someone came along? Well, she had walked out here with her grampa, who wanted to look at some vans. She was just waiting for him, then they'd walk back to town. Grampa loved to walk, everybody knew that. Oiling the joints. Except Norrie didn't think that was all of it, or even most of it. He had started doing his walks when Gramma started getting confused about stuff (no one came right out and said it was Alzheimer's, although everyone knew). Norrie thought he was walking off his sorrow. Was such a thing possible? She thought it was. She knew that when she was riding her skateboard, pulling off some sick double-kink at the skate park in Oxford, there was no room in her for anything but joy and fear, and joy ruled the house. Fear lived in the shack out back.

  After a short while that felt long, the ex-phone company van rolled from behind the building with Grampa at the wheel. Norrie tucked her skateboard under her arm and jumped in. Her first ride in a stolen vehicle.

  "Grampa, you are so gnarly," she said, and kissed him.

  7

  Joe McClatchey was headed for the kitchen, wanting one of the remaining cans of apple juice in their dead refrigerator, when he heard his mother say Bump and stopped.

  He knew that his parents had met in college, at the University of Maine, and that back then Sam McClatchey's friends had called him Bump, but Mom hardly ever called him that anymore, and when she did, she laughed and blushed, as if the nickname had some sort of dirty subtext. About that Joe didn't know. What he knew was that for her to slip like that--slip back like that--must mean she was upset.

  He came a little closer to the kitchen door. It was chocked open and he could see his mother and Jackie Wettington, who was today dressed in a blouse and faded jeans instead of her uniform. They'd be able to see him, too, if they looked up. He had no intention of actually sneaking around; that wouldn't be cool, especially if his mom was upset, but for the time being they were only looking at each other. They were seated at the kitchen table. Jackie was holding Claire's hands. Joe saw that his mother's eyes were wet, and that made him feel like crying himself.

  "You can't," Jackie was saying. "I know you want to, but you just can't. Not if things go like they're supposed to tonight."

  "Can I at least call him and tell him why I won't be there? Or e-mail him! I could do that!"

  Jackie shook her head. Her face was kind but firm. "He might talk, and the talk might get back to Rennie. If Rennie sniffs something in the wind before we break Barbie and Rusty out, we could have a total disaster on our hands."

  "If I tell him to keep it strictly to himself--"

  "But Claire, don't you see? There's too much at stake. Two men's lives. Ours, too." She paused. "Your son's."

  Claire's shoulders sagged, then straightened again. "You take Joe, then. I'll come after Visitors Day. Rennie won't suspect me; I don't know Dale Barbara from Adam, and I don't know Rusty, either, except to say hi to on the street. I go to Dr. Hartwell over in Castle Rock."

  "But Joe knows Barbie, " Jackie said patiently. "Joe was the one who set up the video feed when they shot the missiles. And Big Jim knows that. Don't you think he might take you into custody and sweat you until you told him where we went?"

  "I wouldn't," Claire said. "I would never tell."

  Joe came into the kitchen. Claire wiped her cheeks and tried to smile. "Oh hi, honey. We were just talking about Visitors Day, and--"

  "Mom, he might not just sweat you," Joe said. "He might torture you."

  She looked shocked. "Oh, he wouldn't do that. I know he's not a nice man, but he's a town selectman, after all, and--"

  "He was a town selectman," Jackie said. "Now he's auditioning for emperor. And sooner or later everybody talks. Do you want Joe to be somewhere imagining you having your fingernails pulled out?"

  "Stop it!" Claire said. "That's horrible!"

  Jackie didn't let go of Claire's hands when Claire tried to pull them back. "It's all or nothing, and it's too late to be nothing. This thing is in motion, and we've got to move with it. If it was just Bar-bie escaping by himself with no help from us, Big Jim might actually let him go. Because every dictator needs a boogeyman. But it won't just be him, will it? And that means he'll try to find us, and wipe us out."

  "I wish I'd never gotten into this. I wish I'd never gone to that meeting, and never let Joe go."

  "But we've got to stop him!" Joe protested. "Mr. Rennie's trying to turn The Mill into a, you know, police state!"

  "I can't stop anybody!" Claire nearly wailed. "I'm a goddam housewife !"

  "If it's any comfort," Jackie said, "you probably had a ticket for this trip as soon as the kids found that box."
<
br />   "It's not a comfort. It's not. "

  "In some ways, we're even lucky," Jackie went on. "We haven't sucked too many innocent people into this with us, at least not yet."

  "Rennie and his police force will find us anyway," Claire said. "Don't you know that? There's only so much town in this town."

  Jackie smiled mirthlessly. "By then there'll be more of us. With more guns. And Rennie will know it."

  "We have to take over the radio station as soon as we can," Joe said. "People need to hear the other side of the story. We have to broadcast the truth."

  Jackie's eyes lit up. "That's a hell of a good idea, Joe."

  "Dear God," Claire said. She put her hands over her face.

  8

  Ernie pulled the phone company van up to the Burpee's loading dock. I'm a criminal now, he thought, and my twelve-year-old granddaughter is my accomplice. Or is she thirteen now? It didn't matter; he didn't think Peter Randolph would treat her as a juvenile if they were caught.

  Rommie opened the rear door, saw it was them, and came out onto the loading dock with guns in both hands. "Have any trouble?"

  "Smooth as silk," Ernie said, mounting the steps to the dock. "There's nobody on the roads. Have you got more guns?"

  "Yuh. A few. Inside, back of the door. You help too, Miss Norrie."

  Norrie picked up two rifles and handed them to her grampa, who stowed them in the back of the van. Rommie rolled a dolly out to the loading dock. On it were a dozen lead rolls. "We don't need to unload dis right now," he said. "I'll just cut some pieces for the windows. We'll do the windshield once we get out there. Leave a slit to see through--like an old Sherman tank--n drive dat way. Norrie, while Ernie and I do dis, see if you can push that other dolly out. If you can't, just leave it and we'll get it after."

  The other dolly was loaded with cartons of food, most of it canned stuff or pouches of concentrate meant for campers. One box was stuffed with envelopes of cut-rate powdered drink mix. The dolly was heavy, but once she got it moving, it rolled easily. Stopping it was another matter; if Rommie hadn't reached up and shoved from where he was standing at the back of the van, the dolly might have gone right off the dock.

  Ernie had finished blocking the stolen van's small rear windows with pieces of lead roll held by generous applications of masking tape. Now he wiped his brow and said, "This is risky as hell, Burpee--we're planning on a damn convoy out to the McCoy Orchard."

  Rommie shrugged, then began loading in cartons of supplies, lining the walls of the van and leaving the middle open for the passengers they hoped to have later. A tree of sweat was growing on the back of his shirt. "We just gotta hope if we do it quick and quiet, the big meetin covers for us. Don't have much choice."

  "Will Julia and Mrs. McClatchey get lead on their car windows?" Norrie asked.

  "Yuh. This afternoon. I'll help em. And den they'll have to leave their cars behind the store. Can't go sportin round town with lead-lined car windows--people'd ask questions."

  "What about that Escalade of yours?" Ernie asked. "That'd swallow the rest of these supplies without so much as a burp. Your wife could drive it out h--"

  "Misha won't come," Rommie said. "Won't have nuthin t'do widdit, her. I asked, did all but get down on my knees n beg, but I might as well have been a gust of wind blowin round the house. I guess I already knew, because I didn't tell her no more than she knew already ... which isn't much, but won't keep her out of trouble if Rennie comes down on her. But she won't see it, her."

  "Why won't she?" Norrie asked, eyes wide, aware that the question might be rude only after it was out and she saw her grampa frown.

  "Because she's one stubborn honey. I told her she might get hurt. 'Like to see em try,' she said. That's my Misha. Well, hell. If I get a chance later on, I may sneak down and see if she change her mind. They say it's a woman's prerogative. Come on, let's put in a few more of those boxes. And don't cover up the guns, Ernie. We might need em."

  "I can't believe I got you into this, kiddo," Ernie said.

  "It's okay, Grampa. I'd rather be in than out." And this much, at least, was true.

  9

  BONK. Silence.

  BONK. Silence.

  BONK. Silence.

  Ollie Dinsmore sat cross-legged four feet from the Dome with his old Boy Scout pack beside him. The pack was full of rocks he'd picked up in the dooryard--so full, in fact, that he'd staggered down here rather than walked, thinking that the canvas bottom would tear out of the pack and spill his ammo. But it hadn't, and here he was. He selected another rock--a nice smooth one, polished by some ancient glacier--and threw it overhand at the Dome, where it struck what appeared to be thin air and bounced back. He picked it up and threw it again.

  BONK. Silence.

  The Dome had one thing going for it, he thought. It might be the reason his brother and his mother were dead, but by the hairy old Jesus, one load of ammunition was enough to last all day.

  Rock boomerangs, he thought, and smiled. It was a real smile, but it made him look somehow terrible, because his face was far too thin. He hadn't been eating much, and he thought it would be a good long while before he felt like eating again. Hearing a shot and then finding your mother lying beside the kitchen table with her dress flipped up to show her underpants and half her head blown off ... a thing like that did nothing for a fellow's appetite.

  BONK. Silence.

  The other side of the Dome was a hive of activity; a tent city had sprung up. Jeeps and trucks scooted to and fro, and hundreds of military guys went buzzing around while their superiors shouted orders and cussed them out, often in the same breath.

  In addition to the tents that had already been erected, three long new ones were being put up. The signs already planted in front of them read VISITORS' HOSPITALITY STATION 1, VISITORS' HOSPITALITY STATION 2, and FIRST AID STATION. Another tent, even longer, had a sign in front of it reading LIGHT REFRESHMENTS. And shortly after Ollie sat down and began tossing his trove of rocks at the Dome, two flatbed trucks loaded with Port-A-Potties had arrived. Now ranks of cheery-looking blue shithouses stood over there, well away from the area where relatives would stand to speak with loved ones they could look at but not touch.

  The stuff that had come out of his mother's head had looked like moldy strawberry jam, and what Ollie couldn't understand was why she'd done it that way, and in that place. Why in the room where they ate most of their meals? Had she been so far gone that she hadn't realized she had another son, who might eat again (assuming he didn't starve to death first) but who would never forget the horror of what lay there on the floor?

  Yep, he thought. That far gone. Because Rory was always her favorite, her pet. She hardly knew I was around, unless I forgot to feed the cows or swab out the stalls when they were afield. Or if I brought home a D on my rank card. Because he never got nothing but As.

  He threw a rock.

  BONK. Silence.

  There were several Army guys putting up pairs of signs over there near the Dome. The ones facing in toward The Mill read

  WARNING!

  FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY!

  KEEP 2 YARDS (6 FEET) FROM THE DOME!

  Ollie guessed the signs pointing the other way said the same, and on the other side they might work, because on the other side there would be lots of guys to keep order. Over here, though, there were going to be maybe eight hundred townies and maybe two dozen cops, most of them new to the job. Keeping people back on this side would be like trying to protect a sand castle from the incoming tide.

  Her underpants had been wet, and there had been a puddle between her splayed legs. She'd pissed herself either right before she pulled the trigger, or right after. Ollie thought probably after.

  He threw a rock.

  BONK. Silence.

  There was one Army guy close by. He was pretty young. There wasn't any kind of insignia on his sleeves, so Ollie guessed he was probably a private. He looked about sixteen, but Ollie supposed he had to be older. He'd heard of kids
lying about their age to get into the service, but he guessed that was before everybody had computers to keep track of such things.

  The Army guy looked around, saw no one was paying him any attention, and spoke in a low voice. He had a southern accent. "Kid? Would y'all stop doing that? It's drivin me bugshit."

  "Go someplace else, then," Ollie said.

  BONK. Silence.

  "Caint. Orders."

  Ollie didn't reply. He threw another rock, instead.

  BONK. Silence.

  "Why y'all doin it?" the Army guy asked. He was now just fiddling with the pair of signs he was putting up so he could talk to Ollie.

  "Because sooner or later, one of them won't bounce back. And when that happens, I'm going to get up and walk away and never see this farm again. Never milk another cow. What's the air like out there?"

  "Good. Chilly, though. I'm from South Cah'lina. It ain't like this in South Cah'lina in October, I can tell you that."

  Where Ollie was, less than three yards from the southern boy, it was hot. Also stinky.

  The Army guy pointed beyond Ollie. "Why don't y'all quit on the rocks and do somethin about those cows?" He said it cay-ows. "Herd em into the barn and milk em or rub soothin shit on their udders; somethin like at."

  "We don't need to herd them. They know where to go. Only now they don't need to be milked, and they don't need any Bag Balm, either. Their udders are dry."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. My dad says something's wrong with the grass. He says the grass is wrong because the air's wrong. It doesn't smell good in here, you know. It smells like crap."

  "Yeah?" The Army guy looked fascinated. He gave the tops of the back-to-back signs a tap or two with his hammer, although they already looked well seated.

  "Yeah. My mother killed herself this morning."

  The Army guy had raised his hammer for another hit. Now he just dropped it to his side. "Are you shittin me, kid?"

  "No. She shot herself at the kitchen table. I found her."

  "Oh fuck, that's rough." The Army guy approached the Dome.

  "We took my brother to town when he died last Sunday, because he was still alive--a little--but my mom was dead as dead can be, so we buried her on the knoll. My dad and me. She liked it there. It was pretty there before everything got so cruddy. "