Under the Dome

give Lin a double-click on her walkie if someone comes. If it’s the Bowies, they’ll park in the side lot and we can drive out on East Street unnoticed.” She cocked her head a little and smiled. “Well… that’s a tad optimistic, but at least unidentified. If we’re lucky.”

Rusty followed her, navigating by the cloudy beacon of her hair. “Did you break in, Stacey?”

“Hell, no. There was a key at the cop-shop. Most of the businesses on Main Street give us keys.”

“And why are you in on this?”

“Because it’s all fear-driven bullshit. Duke Perkins would have put a stop to it long ago. Now come on. And make this fast.”

“I can’t promise that. In fact, I can’t promise anything. I’m not a pathologist.”

“Fast as you can, then.”

Rusty followed her inside. A moment later, Linda’s arms were around him.

9

Harriet Bigelow screamed twice, then fainted. Gina Buffalino only stared, glassy with shock. “Get Gina out of here,” Thurse snapped. He had gotten as far as the parking lot, heard the shots, and come running back. To find this. This slaughter.

Ginny put an arm around Gina’s shoulders and led her back into the hall, where the patients who were ambulatory—this included Bill Allnut and Tansy Freeman—were standing, big-eyed and frightened.

“Get this one out of the way,” Thurse told Twitch, pointing at Harriet. “And pull her skirt down, give the poor girl some modesty.”

Twitch did as he was told. When he and Ginny reentered the room, Thurse was kneeling by the body of Frank DeLesseps, who had died because he’d come in place of Georgia’s boyfriend and over-stayed visiting hours. Thurse had flapped the sheet over Georgia, and it was already blooming with blood-poppies.

“Is there anything we can do, Doctor?” Ginny asked. She knew he wasn’t a doctor, but in her shock it came automatically. She was looking down at Frank’s sprawled body, and her hand was over her mouth.

“Yes.” Thurse rose and his bony knees cracked like pistol shots. “Call the police. This is a crime scene.”

“All the ones on duty will be fighting that fire downstreet,” Twitch said. “Those who aren’t will either be on their way or sleeping with their phones turned off.”

“Well call somebody, for the love of Jesus, and find out if we’re supposed to do anything before we clean up the mess. Take photographs, or I don’t know what. Not that there’s much doubt about what happened. You’ll have to excuse me for a minute. I’m going to vomit.”

Ginny stood aside so Thurston could go into the tiny WC attached to the room. He closed the door, but the sound of his retching was still loud, the sound of a revving engine with dirt caught in it somewhere.

Ginny felt a wave of faintness rush through her head, seeming to lift her and make her light. She fought it off. When she looked back at Twitch, he was just closing his cell phone. “No answer from Rusty,” he said. “I left a voice mail. Anyone else? What about Rennie?”

“No!” She almost shuddered. “Not him.”

“My sister? Andi, I mean?”

Ginny only looked at him.

Twitch looked back for a moment, then dropped his eyes. “Maybe not,” he mumbled.

Ginny touched him above the wrist. His skin was cold with shock. She supposed her own was, too. “If it’s any comfort,” she said, “I think she’s trying to get clean. She came to see Rusty, and I’m pretty sure that was what it was about.”

Twitch ran his hands down the sides of his face, turning it for a moment into an opera bouffe mask of sorrow. “This is a nightmare.”

“Yes,” Ginny said simply. Then she took out her cell phone again.

“Who you gonna call?” Twitch managed a little smile. “Ghost-busters?”

“No. If Andi and Big Jim are out, who does that leave?”

“Sanders, but he’s dogshit-useless and you know it. Why don’t we just clean up the mess? Thurston’s right, what happened here is obvious.”

Thurston came out of the bathroom. He was wiping his mouth with a paper towel. “Because there are rules, young man. And under the circumstances, it’s more important than ever that we follow them. Or at least give it the good old college try.”

Twitch looked up and saw Sammy Bushey’s brains drying high on one wall. What she had used to think with now looked like a clot of oatmeal. He burst into tears.

10

Andy Sanders was sitting in Dale Barbara’s apartment, on the side of Dale Barbara’s bed. The window was filled with orange fireglare from the burning Democrat building next door. From above him he heard footsteps and muffled voices—men on the roof, he assumed.

He had brought a brown bag with him when he climbed the inside staircase from the pharmacy below. Now he took out the contents: a glass, a bottle of Dasani water, and a bottle of pills. The pills were OxyContin tablets. The label read HOLD FOR A. GRINNELL. They were pink, the twenties. He shook some out, counted, then shook out more. Twenty. Four hundred milligrams. It might not be enough to kill Andrea, who’d had time to build up a tolerance, but he was sure it would do quite well for him.

The heat from the fire next door came baking through the wall. His skin was wet with sweat. It had to be at least a hundred in here, maybe more. He wiped his face with the coverlet.

Won’t feel it much longer. There’ll be cool breezes in heaven, and we’ll all sit down to dinner together at the Lord’s table.

He used the bottom of the glass to grind the pink pills into powder, making sure the dope would hit him all at once. Like a hammer on a steer’s head. Just lie down on the bed, close his eyes, and then good night, sweet pharmacist, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Me… and Claudie… and Dodee. Together for eternity.

Don’t think so, brother.

That was Coggins’s voice, Coggins at his most dour and declamatory. Andy paused in the act of crushing the pills.

Suicides don’t eat supper with their loved ones, my friend; they go to hell and dine on hot coals that burn forever in the belly. Can you give me hallelujah on that? Can you say amen?

“Bullspit,” Andy whispered, and went back to grinding the pills. “You were snout-first in the trough with the rest of us. Why should I believe you?”

Because I speak the truth. Your wife and daughter are looking down on you right now, pleading with you not to do it. Can’t you hear them?

“Nope,” Andy said. “And that’s not you, either. It’s just the part of my mind that’s cowardly. It’s run me my whole life. It’s how Big Jim got hold of me. It’s how I got into this meth mess. I didn’t need the money, I don’t even understand that much money, I just didn’t know how to say no. But I can say it this time. Nosir. I’ve got nothing left to live for, and I’m leaving. Got anything to say to that?”

It seemed that Lester Coggins did not. Andy finished reducing the pills to powder, then filled the glass with water. He brushed the pink dust into the glass using the side of his hand, then stirred with his finger. The only sounds were the fire and the dim shouts of the men fighting it and from above, the thump-thud- thump of other men walking around on his roof.

“Down the hatch,” he said… but didn’t drink. His hand was on the glass, but that cowardly part of him—that part that didn’t want to die even though any meaningful life was over—held it where it was.

“No, you don’t win this time,” he said, but he let go of the glass so he could wipe his streaming face with the